December 2007 Archives

Just woke up a little while ago and had a nice supper of Tacos. Nothing like a few bites of refried beans to ring in the New Year with, especially considering that I will be working 3rd shift tonight :)

I'm pretty much just sitting around watching a bit of TV with the girls trying to wake up. I had to take a couple of Benadryl this morning in order to sleep all afternoon and that stuff still has me pretty foggy headed. I hate the way I feel when I wake up after taking it but it's the only way I could get any sleep.

I just got myself covered on 3rd where one of my cooks had called in, so I will be able to go work in Carrollton with the other two District Managers as we had originally planned. That will be cool because they are my friends and as much as I enjoy working with my employees I would rather spend the evening with my friends.

I hope all of you have a wonderful New Year in 2008 and all of your dreams come to fruition.

Sorry about the slow loading times for the site today. I'm not real sure what's up but it appears to be hanging up on MyBlogLog's JavaScript tracking widget. I will give it another hour or so before I yank it from the site.

I have been getting quite a few hits lately from the post I put up a couple of years ago when Meedio and crew sold out to Yahoo and crapped all over the users that had donated and purchased Meedio from them. Anyhow, at that point I was hosting Meedio here for download but the bandwidth got to be too much and I took the file offline.

Here is a link for anyone interested in downloading Meedio. It seems to be pretty reliable. I will also see if I can locate some others when I have the time and post them as well as others.

http://members.chello.be/sf15418/MEEDIO.1.41.setup.exe

I was hoping to be home by at least 9 this morning. I have a couple of hours of work to do prior to going to bed around noon. I may stay up a few extra minutes so that I can write a little bit.

Unfortunately I got hung up at one of my stores. One of my guys hasn't gotten his vacation check that he was due for six weeks ago so my VP authorized me to let him have it out of the safe in that store and then when we get the check (if) next Sunday I can just give him the difference. Unfortunately my manager in that store screwed up when he was paying everyone (he made the previous day's deposit PRIOR to paying them) and had no money in the safe. I ended up having to take the $200 out of my bank account and buy the cash chit out of his safe and now I get to hold it until Sunday.

I also knew when the last manager left that I would end up embroiled in the middle of a legal investigation and apparently it is so. I had to give a statement today answering a bunch of bullshit questions about some really crazy stuff.

The list is actually longer but some of the stuff doesn't need to be here. It's all complaints called in from the manager that quit but they have to do the investigation anyway. The funniest one I heard was the fact that apparently I smoke meth in the back room with my employees.

When my wife heard that one she was livid. I would hate for her to meet the ex-manager on the street because one of the would be in the hospital. Some people are fucking idiots and half of them work for me. It never ceases to amaze me what people will say and do when they are angry or want to get back at you in some way. That's even better than the investigation where the husband of one of my waitresses claimed that she was pregnant with my baby after she left him. Never mind the fact that she apparently can't get pregnant, I had my nut cutting operation five years ago and don't fool around anyway. They are back together now and he apologized to me a couple of years back and now she's one of our managers. It's just the fact that they had to take that bullshit seriously enough to investigate it that never ceases to amaze me. One day I will work completely for myself and the only investigating that will be going on is the one going on behind my eyelids while I take my afternoon naps.

I mentioned yesterday when I was posting about the trip to the Bahamas that I like to listen to Clark Howard on the radio. Since I haven't commuted to work since 2003 I don't get to listen as much as I used to but I still enjoy it occasionally. I wonder if his show is on the Internet? I may have to check that out.

Anyway, one of the things that I heard about quite a bit on the Clark Howard show was the fact that a lot of people use Canadian pharmacies to get their medicine. There are some gives and takes in our system. Lot's of Canadians visit the U.S. for their health care because it is so much more advanced and some of the medicines and treatments we have here are not available there, but there are just as many if not more people that use a Canadian Pharmacy to get their medicines because the cost is so much cheaper.

For instance, I take Protonix and Vytorin for my ulcer and my cholesterol. A 30 day supply of Protonix costs me (after insurance costs) somewhere around $50. I can get the same drug from DrugDelivery.ca for slightly less than that BEFORE my insurance. I may have to look into some of the mail order stuff and see exactly how much I can save. The biggest thing is that I will need to make sure and get a couple months at a time since it's mail order and I am bad about running out of the stuff before I renew my prescriptions.

...of new posts, particularly since I have only been posting one or two a day for the last month? Simple. I am going on vacation in six weeks and need to drive traffic and increase the amount of money in my Paypal account. Sad isn't it?

Actually while having extra vacation funds is a big part of the reason, I feel as if I have been neglecting the site recently and wanted to get some posts up. Since it's extremely slow this week it was a perfect time.

Tomorrow I go in for a couple of hours and then will come home to rest up. I may get a bit of posting up before I go to bed tomorrow, it really just depends on when I get home. I have to work until at least 9 tomorrow morning and then from 9pm tomorrow night until 9am on Tuesday. All of the management team at my level or above will be working on the graveyard shift tomorrow night to insure that all of the New Year's revelers get taken care of. It sucks but it's one of those things we have to do.

I had almost forgotten to post about it but that last review I did on Costa Rica real estate reminded me.

I booked our flights to Nassau, the Bahamas this morning prior to going to work. I start my vacation on February 14th and I was actually looking for flight information to Key West but after looking around several sites as well as Clark Howard's (one of my heroes) I discovered that I could fly to Nassau cheaper than I could to Key West. WTF is up with that?

I don't have a passport or anything and the wife's is  long expired so I sent off for our birth certificates (actually she did) this morning and I should have them back by the end of the week. Tomorrow morning I will get my passport photos done and then send off for them prior to the end of the week. It's kind of expensive but you can get expedited passport delivery in something like three weeks. That should give me a couple of weeks to spare.

This is Atlantis, one of the resorts down there...

I don't know that we will stay there but it's one of the places I have been looking at.

My natural instincts are to get something cheap and deal with that but there are a couple of the all-inclusive resort deals that look interesting. All food, alcohol, activities and gratuities for one price. Not too bad. I am looking forward to the trip as I have never been outside of the United States. Might as well make the first trip to the Caribbean. First I have to deal with the down side though...

What's the down side you ask?

Getting there.

I would just as soon drive to Miami and then take a cruise to Nassau but since we are going in the middle of February the wife is going to have to take an extra day off of work as it is. We are somewhat limited on time.

Damn.

As I said at the top, I booked our flights this morning.

I hate flying.

The last time I flew was in February 2006 when I went down to the Gulf Coast to work for a week in one of our restaurants.

I hate flying.

I may ask my doctor for a couple of valium just so that I can make the flight. Maybe not Valium, but something else to tranquilize my paranoid ass so that I can make the two and a half hour fucking flight over the middle of nothing but sharks.

Did you know that hitting the water from 30,000 feet is just like hitting cement?

It may be safer to fly than to drive but at least when I am driving I am in control and can pull the fuck over.

It's not even a matter of facing your fears. I have faced my fear of flying before and every time I do it again it's worse.

Anybody have any tips?

I don't want to get so drunk that I'm chasing dwarves around the airport or anything, they might throw my ass out before I ever get on the plane.

no, really...

Just maybe not the kind you came here looking for...

I used to do quite a bit of PC repair and home networking stuff, particularly when I was working in the IT department at our home office. People still want me to work on their computers but I really just don't have the time to devote to it anymore. I don't do custom-built computers any more and I very rarely even give any kind of tech advice.

That's one of the cool things about services like Fast-teks. They specialize in home computer repair and troubleshooting. In addition to troubleshooting and repair they also work on virus, worm and spyware removal, wireless networking, data backup and recovery, high speed Internet setup, software training and several other services as well.

Fast-Teks is partnered with CompUSA as well as Tiger Direct and Dr.Backup so you know you are getting technicians that know what they are doing when you call Fast-Teks.

During the next few weeks you may notice that once a week a couple of folks will be dropping by to put up a guest post or two here and quite possibly at my tech site. We'll see how it goes.

It's nice every once in a while to get different views on stuff and with the posts that I do about politics here and there it will fit right in. The Marine may even be persuaded to write something every once in a while if he can tear himself away from the X-Box 360.

Speaking of guests my brother may drop in occasionally as he has done in the past. If you haven't had the chance to read his book, Republic, you should head your happy ass on over to Amazon and get a copy.

We had a bit more company earlier today. Michelle and the kids came over this afternoon to hang out for a while and it was nice to see them. Not it's pretty quiet though. My brother and his wife have started their seven hour drive back home to Cary along with the kids. I know that they are ready to get home and relax after having spent the better part of the last three weeks in Maine or here.

They were up north with his wife's family when all of that bad weather hit the northeast and the pictures they had of the snow was amazing. At least once I would truly love to just go check out some snowy weather. Perhaps not for long but it would be pretty cool to see and play in, then get the hell out of Dodge for warmer weather.

Speaking of warmer weather I think we may actually be able to manage getting to the Keys in February. If I can get off my ass and make a good deal of money online over the next few weeks we may just do it. It does mean flying down though because we will only be able to go for two or three days without the children, not to mention the fact that the wife will still be at work. Alas, my vacation won't coincide with their spring break once again.

While I miss my brother already it's kind of nice to have a few minutes of quiet. I have put both the girls to bead, the wife is relaxing watching the boob tube and the Marine is immersed in a book on the couch. The loudest thing going on now are the fans in my computer and what my son describes as me attacking the keyboard.

I started working with the ideas presented in this e-book about a month ago and in that time I have more than doubled my profits from PPC campaigns. If you are interested in learning how to double your pay-per-click profits then go check it out.

So I was sitting here trying to get my staffing a couple of nights ago when one of my managers called me. I guess when he called the store whoever it was that answered the phone was not supposed to be working and he thought they sounded drunk. He went ahead and drove on in to his store to see what was up.

To make a long story short the guy that occasionally works as a relief manager for me had shown up and sent one of the waitresses home (he doesn't have any kind of authority for that sort of stuff) and was clocked in and working as her AND had made her pay him $20 to work in her place. Nobody called the manager or me to let us know what was going on.

The guy must have been messed up on pain pills or something. Apparently he kept wandering around asking 'what did I do, what did I do?' when the manager asked him to leave. He refused to get out of the restaurant so my manager called the law on him and they ran him off the property.

According to the guy he had a series of mini-strokes and ended up going to the emergency room. I tend to trust people when they tell me stuff but I told him he would need to bring me the paperwork from the hospital. Aside from his behavior is the fact that he never should have been working anyway, particularly under someone else's name. It's illegal in addition to being against our company policies.

Needless to say one of the waitresses was fired for theft during that time and I have pulled the guy off of that store's schedule until he can bring me the medical paperwork proving what he says. Even then he may not be working back in that store which is going to seriously curtail his hours and the days he can work. I don't know what the fuck got in his head to make him think it was a good idea. The only reason he hasn't been terminated yet is that he has been with us 25+ years and is a pretty good employee. I will end up having to make sure I document all of it though, including a written warning, just to cover my ass.

This seems to have been the longest week in history. I ended up working seven days and Christmas was a 20 hour day for me. I am still pretty stressed out and just want to sleep for a week. I'm off today and my next two days off are something like January 8th and 9th. I may try and get another day off between now and then but it's not likely. All of us have to work the 31st and 1st and then I have my three managers off two days apiece before I am taking any time off. I just didn't feel like it would be right for me to take time off and rest up prior to my employees.

I do get a vacation soon though, mid-February. I will take at least two days off during that time where I do NO work. No paid postings, no working on web sites, no fucking restaurants. My last complete day off with neither things was most likely back in October when I spent the weekend in Helen.

I think I am going to clean up and go hit the coffee shop with my brother for a couple of hours, then I will get back online later today. I have several different projects I am working on and need to get at least some stuff finished.

It's been a pretty doggone long week. I have one more day of work until I get one day off. My brother and his wife are staying in town until Saturday evening so that we can hang out a bit. It's been pretty nice seeing them this week.

They are moving back down here in a few months and that will be very cool. As far as I know they are going to be on the north side of town which means that while I may not see them on a weekly basis I will be able to get together with them more often that I get to now.

I suppose the only caveat to that is the fact that I am going to turn in my card for promotion in February. If they don't put me on a development plan they could send me just about anywhere, including out of state. That would be a bit of a bitch now that my family is back in the Atlanta area.

My stress level has risen quite a bit this week while my threshold of dealing with stupidity has gone quite low. I am having a hard time putting up with the amount of bullshit that goes on. One of my managers that has been with us a little less than a year is also having a pretty hard time dealing with the stress of it right now. She calls it her stupidity level. I can understand that. Hopefully it will get a bit easier for her to deal with, that is if she sticks around long enough.

Hopefully she won't quit before it does get easier but she's not making enough money as she could. I lost about a grand this month in bonuses due to the fact that I lost that crappy manager last month and while I hate the shitty paycheck it was worth it for her to go. This one I don't want to lose because she is good at her job, I just need to get in there and show her how to manage some of it a bit better.

One more day... That's pretty much all I have thought about today. It has been pretty hard to actually get anything done. At least I know I'm not the only one that's worn out. My boss has worked just as many days as I have and his Thursday meeting only lasted about thirty minutes today as compared to hours just a couple of weeks ago. A blessing in disguise.

It's obvious here too, being as how this is the first thing I have posted in the last twenty four hours. I have actually been doing some writing on another story/timeline having to do with one of the news reports I write about quite often. Right now it's probably somewhere over a thousand words and not even a quarter of the way finished. I may try and get it finished on Saturday if I get the chance. That's about it for tonight. Perhaps I can get something posted in the morning prior to leaving for work.

I was thinking earlier about the first time I ever drove. My daddy had taught me a little bit in the parking lot where he worked and they let me drive a bit on my learner's license but the first time I ever drove WITHOUT adult supervision was (of course) in the middle of the night. One of my best friends at the time, Gearhead (don't ask) was spending the night or something and we went out and boosted the car. It was a 1977 Red Thunderbird. The last year that they made the Thunderbird using all steel construction. It was a great car.

For whatever reason, and why do teenagers ever need a reason, we thought it would be a great idea to drive out and pick up our girlfriends. Although I was 16 I only had a learner's permit. Hell, I was 21 before I got a driver's license. We were paranoid as hell and freaked out every time that we saw a police officer. When I had to stop and get gas I just knew that everyone there KNEW I was driving illegally. I don't know if the folks ever knew that I took the car out but we did no damage to it, thank goodness.

Although I was 21 when I got my license I did drive occasionally. As I've mentioned in the past we did a lot of roadtrips and my friend Doug would let me drive when he was tired. I guess it was just dumb luck that I never managed to get in a car accident.

...Most blatantly stolen/borrowed/copied from Wiki's entry on Christmas. I was over at Elisson's this morning and read a post referring to an article at CNN that had really pissed me off this past week. I had thoroughly planned to post on it but since several other people have already done so I decided to just put this up.

Basically what it all means is that the Christmas of today is nothing like what it was in centuries past and or current religions have borrowed from others to create a special day so that the pagans would still be able to worship at the same time.

Have a wonderful holiday and I will try to be back online tomorrow.

I just wanted to get on an wish everyone a very merry Christmas. Most likely I will be offline the rest of the day as I will be working from 6AM until about 2AM tomorrow morning and then back at work at 7AM the next day.

We had our Christmas at the house yesterday evening. A good time was had by all. My son is home for the holidays and my brother, his wife and their kids are here as well. We opened the gifts and had a nice traditional Christmas dinner. Now everyone is off playing with their goodies and just chilling out.

I am pretty tired since I had several phone calls from one of my stores up until just after midnight last night. Just as soon as I get staffing from my stores tonight I am going to hit the sack. Tomorrow morning is going to come much too soon.

I hope you all have a joyous holiday season and get to spend time with your loved ones. Time with the family is what it's all about.

I think I found a gadget that I want to get. I have been considering getting a plasma TV later on in the year to replace my aging television and hook to my HTPC but one of the things I want to make sure and do is to keep it low key. I came across a plasma lift that's built in to a cabinet that looks really cool. Set right I would be able to keep it in front of a picture or something on the wall behind it and then only have the Plasma TV come up when it was needed. Pretty cool actually.

Speaking of the HTPC, I should have all of the equipment I need to build a new one by February or so. I am looking forward to it. My ten-year-old asked me the other night when I was going to put BeyondTV back on. The whole family got used to being able to watch what they want and pause and skip commercials and when I took it out they hated it.

...another dollar, or at least 50 cents.

My brother and his family should be arriving at some point this morning. They called last night and said they were on the way, so I don't know what time they will be here. Particularly with the rain that has been pretty persistent over the last 24 hours they may have been delayed a bit.

Rain?

Yep, thank goodness. We certainly need it right now. Not that a couple of days of rain is going to fix things here but it certainly won't hurt. It would actually take about three months of steady rain to get the water table back to where it needs to be, but every bit we get over this winter will help to alleviate the drought once it starts getting warm again.

I am spending the day again at my busiest store. With tomorrow being Christmas Eve, the Wal-Mart is sure to be pretty busy which means that I will as well. We have a bit of prep work to finish up today and tomorrow. Most of it is stuff that is going to have to wait until tomorrow anyway at least. I told them to wait until then to do salads and tomatoes. I will go cut them myself at all three stores in the morning since they would get mushy doing them too early. Most of the managers will be very busy tomorrow so I need to make sure to finish any last minute items.

...

Toward the end of the summer I noticed that we apparently have mice. Over the last few weeks the cat has caught several of the damned thing. Mostly babies but that means that somewhere around here is the momma. Good cat. Better than my plan. I am the kind of guy that would wander the house and pick them off with a .357 but for some reason shooting holes in the floor just doesn't seem like a real good idea. That and the fact that the local police seem to frown on shooting up houses in my area. I don't know. One of those things I guess.

...

Got the paper towel holders installed in the restrooms at work recently. With the changes in law that the state implemented we are required to have paper towel holders so that people can use them to open the door with. After you wash your hands when you touch the door you have re-contaminated yourself with someone else's feces. Nice thought this early in the morning. Next thing you know I will be required to install wipes in my restrooms. Actually the paper towels are a great idea, unfortunately what happens is that customers tend to shove them in the toilet and clog it up. My how I would love to come visit them at their houses...

I haven't been keeping up with the news about the Brave lately or I obviously would have seen that Tom Glavine has signed a one year contract to come back and play with the Braves. That kicks ass. I really like Tom Glavine and was sorry to see talks break down with the Braves and have him leave for the Mets five years ago.

The move back to the Atlanta Braves is actually a cut in pay for him prompted because of the simplest things. He wants to be near his family and was willing to take a pay cut in order to do it. I can certainly understand that, not that he has to worry about his salary. Even with the pay cut the contract he signed was $8 million for one year. Damn. Obviously I am making more now that I have several restaurants but that's still 10 times my last twenty years of salary.

I did a write-up on Avot mV and their official blog a couple of months ago and what they had to offer mobile users. Since then the site has really improved and now they also have the political debates that have taken place recently on Avot mV channels. There are channels for republican ads as well as another one for democratic candidates.

If you want to check it out from your PC prior to using it on your mobile phone they have a desktop PC widget on the website so you can see what kind of videos are available. What's cool is that you should be able to access the site not only from Pocket PC/SmartPhones and iPhones but regular mobile browsers as well, such as the one included with the Motorola Razr. I just tried it from my wife's Razr and it worked very well, particularly since Verizon has recently expanded their broadband area so that I can access it from my house. No more 2400 baud speeds when I am on the Internet from my phone. Very sweet.

I had a few issues connecting to the site tonight from my phone, apparently Verizon has a DNS server down or something, but I have been able to get to the site using both Pocket IE as well as Opera Mini. The nice thing about using the Samsung that I will most likely replace in the next two months is the slider QWERTY keyboard. It makes getting to the site even better because I can view it in landscape mode.

Anyway, Avot mV is for mobile users what Youtube is for PCs. It allows me to have unlimited access to any web based video. Supposedly I should be able to play videos from Youtube and MySpace on my phone but I always seem to have problems and until earlier this evening I have never had one accessing Avot mV. You can check out their product site to get more information about Avot mV and what they have to offer. Their corporate site offers more insight into the technology behind the streaming video services offered as well as news updates.

One of the cool things is that it's easy to search videos, just by typing a few characters to go on rather than full titles and words. You can also personalize the video listings based on your preferences, organize them into playlists and use Avot mV's integrated messaging features to share your videos with your friends and family members. Did I mention it's free? Yeah, that's right. Obviously it's going to use whatever air or data time you have set up for your plan, in my case I already pay for an unlimited data plan because of email so it really is free. It works on most carriers including support for 3G, EDGE, EV-DO, and WiFi.

I came across Joe Sparks' work back around '99 or 2000 and I never get tired of the Radiskull and Devil Doll cartoons. The are hilarious.

There are links to all eight of the episodes at Joe Sparks' home page. This is the third one. Go check out all eight of them if you get the chance. They are pretty good for a laugh.

The Marine just got home from the movies. He and a friend went out to the movies and dinner and are both staying here tonight, most likely to play the X-Box 360 all night. He still hasn't gotten his mom a Christmas gift. I am starting to get really pissed off about it.

The wife drove him to Carrollton first thing this morning. He is to be working at the recruiter's office the week after Christmas, which is how he got two weeks leave. The problem is that he forgot his service shoes, so his recruiter was supposed to meet him at the station in Carrollton at nine this morning to take him out to Dobbin's Air Base and get a pair. Apparently the guy never showed so they will have to make the trip tomorrow or Monday. That would be fun...driving to Marietta on Christmas Eve. Not.

I just got him alone and read him the riot act about the gift though, so hopefully he will get it taken care of in the next 48 hours.

...

Today was pretty busy. One of my stores sits in the parking lot of a Wal-Mart so I spent the majority of the day there, other than a couple of quick trips to the other two stores and one to pick up my change order from the bank. Crap, I could have used a cart for that. $2300 in ones, fives and rolled change takes a couple of trips from the bank to the car. I probably could have carried it in one trip but had I dropped it picking up $2300 in LOOSE change would have been no fun at all.

...

While I work a lot during the holidays there is a bonus. All of my managers have to work as well, so they are responsible for shift change. Except for Christmas Day I won't have to go back in at all for shift change or hassle with the employees at all, although since my phone has been ringing off the hook for the last few hours you wouldn't know it.

Had to cover a shift for a friend of mine in another district and then I spoke for a while with one of my cooks. It was pretty depressing. His mom passed away last night and he was worried about losing his job if he wasn't able to make it on Christmas Day. I reassured him that he would still have a job regardless of what his manager said. He may be there anyway. He is pretty dedicated and he can't afford to miss any work. This is a terrible time of year to lose anyone though. I hate it for him and wish him the best.

Thursday night finally got to me and I don't think I have fully recovered yet. I had fully planned on sleeping in yesterday since I didn't get to sleep until after three yesterday morning. The wife and boy had to go out so I was up by eight. They didn't make it home until the afternoon and we ate and I got to nap for maybe an hour. Just not enough.

At that point the boy and I went out to pick out my Christmas present. They had looked at several different leather coats but it was decided that I needed to go pick it out myself. It just makes it easier to do it that way. I know it's supposed to be a surprise but I am funny about my clothes and if you are going to spend that kind of money it's best to try stuff on and see how it looks and fits.

It took forever to get in and out of the mall with the Christmas shoppers. Had to also stop by Wal-mart for a few miscellaneous items that they had forgotten on the trip earlier in the day. It was also pretty crowded but nothing like it will be this weekend. We finally got home around seven last night and had to wrap gifts since the girls were out with a friend.

I had planned on going to bed early last night as well but with the present wrapping and whatnot I didn't hit the sack until pretty late and it took forever to get to sleep. Maybe tonight I can get to bed at a decent time. I don't particularly want to face Christmas day with only ten hours of sleep between now and then. Luckily all of my managers are in place until Wednesday so I shouldn't have to go back in unless there is an emergency. I know a couple of them are behind on the prep work that they need to have finished and it's not for lack of me trying to have them do it, they are just dragging their damned feet. I guess they just magically expect for it to get done for them.

I will go to the bank this morning as I have to pick up the change for Christmas. It's a chunk at around $2200 for the two stores. I told them Thursday to make sure and wait on their deposits so that I could get the stuff. One can only hope that they followed directions. I don't have enough in my checking account to cover the change purchase if they didn't.

I am somewhat pissed off at the Marine right now. Originally he was going to get something for his mom for Christmas but he just doesn't have the money, so I told him I would get the expensive present and he needed to order the other one that she really wanted anyway. The kid waits until yesterday and wants to search online for it. Friday night before Christmas. It would be OK, he could just make her something and then get her the gift late but she refuses to help search for the damned program online and I can't find it. Whatever it is that she wants isn't something that's sold at Amazon or Borders and searching on the web doesn't bring anything up, at least on the first page or two and that is unusual, particularly since I was searching by name. My brother will be in town on Sunday night so they can just go the fuck out on Monday and find her something.

I went ahead and kept him on our cell phone plan because even with the unlimited data plan that he uses it will still only cost him about $50 a month, which is half what he would be paying on his own plan. I just deal with the family minutes and make him pay the $45 for the data plan and another $5 for the extra line, which is half the cost. He is supposed to have set up an automatic transfer to my account every month and hasn't. When I reminded him on the first he asked if he could pay it on the fifteenth and I told him no problem. I asked him again last night and am still waiting. With the data plan he's on my cell phone bill is touching just under $400 a month now and this time next month I am going to take the hit and cancel his phone. January thru March are the crappy times at work and aside from what I make online that we will use on vacation in February I am not going to have any extra since most likely I will owe the IRS at least a couple of grand and I have to make sure that's set aside. I don't have very much taken out of my check during the year since I'm not particularly impressed with the idea of giving the IRS an interest free loan during the year. I would rather owe them a bit at the end than get a chunk back. I like keeping my paycheck when I earn it personally.

He'll pay it, that I don't doubt. I am just slightly pissed off. He's spent seven months earnings on DVDs, music and game consoles, maxed out his credit card and has no money. I bought the bus ticket for him to come home for Christmas as one of his two Christmas gifts and he just needs to suck it up and start paying his fucking bills and saving some money. He still has yet to sign up for their retirement plan although he's had the paperwork since June. I guess most of it is the fact that he's been overwhelmed with his freedom to spend his money any way he wants now. He will figure it out, but with the fact that he will be stationed out in California he needs to figure it out soon if we wants to be able to fly home on leave next year.

I suppose that's about it this morning. I need to start getting ready for work but don't really want to. I just needed to rant for a moment. I am actually extremely happy he gets to spend the holiday here. This is just a rough time for me. I spend quite a bit of time at work during the holidays and it seems to get harder every year and there's not a lot of support from my family on that end and it seems to get worse every year as well. Sometimes it's hard being Mr Christmas Spirit around here. Sometimes I feel like the lone fucking ranger.

Now that I have that shit out of my system I think I will go listen to some Christmas music...

I don't normally rant and cuss in my open-trackback posts but since this is the only thing I am posting this morning it is going to be my open-trackback entry for the pre-Christmas weekend.

If you are interested in showcasing your best work and getting more traffic to your blog, consider participating in the open trackback alliance. You can find out more information at the link for Linkfest Haven and learn what it's all about at The Crazy Rants of Samantha Burns.

I had one of the guys I used to work with call me a few days ago trying to come back to work. We have a long history together. I actually worked for him for a while back in 1988. He has been in and out of our company for several years until he sued us a while back for a worker's comp issue. I honestly don't know if the claim was real or not but what I do know is that he settled for a couple of grand because his shoulder hurt. I have had a couple of worker's compensation claims before, that's what we have WC insurance for. No big deal, they take care of you and you get your self back to work. Settling for a couple of grand and being out of a career forever just doesn't seem like a real wise move to me.

The last few years he has had some issues with diet pills along with some other stronger prescription medicines he shouldn't be taking. They can be real helpful when used as directed but otherwise I have seen too many people abuse them.

He called me suggesting that I work him under somebody else's social security number and that stuff just isn't going to happen. There is no way I am going to endanger my career just so he can get a couple of weeks of work in. I don't like very many people enough to do something like that for them.

The wife and the Marine had to run to Douglasville this morning. They are going ahead and getting some Christmas shopping taken care of this morning at the Mall. She hates going to the mall even more than she hates shopping but it's one of those things I suppose.

I was reading this story over at CNN last night about one mall where the police are really creating a presence and they had some news crews out there filming some of the things people would do. Purses and phones in plain view in their cars, expensive gifts left in eyeshot and even worse, some of them wore open.

Even if you keep your stuff locked in the trunk there is still the danger of it coming up missing. This time of year criminals are out because they know that people hide stuff in their cars. That can make a car more of a target and even effect your car insurance policy.

I had to get online last night and renew my car insurance. The company had called me day before yesterday and told me I had underpaid them by $15 by mistake so I had to get on their site. Most of them allow you to pay online which certainly makes life easier. Fifteen years ago it would have just been canceled and I would have had to deal with going out and getting car insurance quotes and renewing the policy. Cheap car insurance is easy to find but I prefer to keep the same company rather than having to switch every couple of years.

I guess I am on a video kick tonight, so here's another for ya'

Just pretty much trying to stay awake now. I have to drive in to Atlanta in an hour and a half or so to pick up my son at the Greyhound station and have been up for about 20 hours now.

This looks pretty cool. I have enjoyed the movies from Marvel the last few years and this looks pretty neat.

I guess the trailer has been out for a while but this was the first time I have come across it.

I don't know what crawled up my ass and died last night but boy was I in a foul mood while I sat here and type until 11:15 when I should have already been in bed. Nobody pissed me off and nothing particularly bad happened yesterday once you get past the part where I had to crawl out of bed. Just one of those things I suppose. That whole teenage pregnancy thing seems to have touched a vein. Perhaps because my eldest daughter is now ten and I am sure that it will be clobberin' time on some teenage boys in a few years. If I start selling skin colored lampshades ala Daughmer you'll know why...Don't say I didn't warn ya'

We had our company Christmas party last night. It was held at the same venue as last year, Classic on Noble in Anniston, Alabama. Dinner was nice and there were a few nice gifts and games. It's pretty nice to see some of the folks that I don't get to see all of the time. It ran a bit late so we didn't make it home until around 10 PM or so. The girls were happy to be picked up and it gave me a chance to try and recruit the dad of the house for work. He's got around 20 years of restaurant experience and in need of a decent paying job now. I am lousy at recruiting people so hopefully he'll bite. I need to turn in my card for promotion in about three months and they have been on my ass to hire someone anyway...That would go a long way toward a bit of good will on my side.

I am crossing my fingers and hoping that I don't have my normal Thursday meeting this afternoon. I wouldn't mind getting a bit of shut-eye this afternoon since I have to leave the house around midnight and make the drive to Atlanta. Why, you ask?

The Marine is home for two weeks! His Greyhound pulls in to Atlanta at 1 AM or thereabouts and I will be waiting for him amidst the crack-heads and winos. It's bad enough to go down to the Garnett area during the daytime, but at 1 AM. Fucking crazy...

We spoke with him the other night and he was pretty pissed off. Apparently one of the Marines had screwed something up so they canceled every liberty for EVERYONE, made them do a bunch of cleaning, and just to make sure nobody left base they were calling formation every hour on the hour until 0300. That's fucking three o'clock in the morning for those of you not in the know.

...and this for the boy who would sleep in half the day...

bwahahaha

Out of all the stuff I have posted the last couple of days, I put up a pretty short one this morning before I left for work linking to this CNN report about Jamie Lynn Spears being pregnant.

I've had more hits today for that than anything else this week. So what, she's pregnant. I like what Below the Beltway had to say though,

'Because, ya know, we can't figure out how this happened'.

bwahahaha.

That was in response to this:

Like I said this morning, put it in a sock.

Updated 10:55 PM - Apparently the paparazzi caught Britney Spears unawares at which point in time she denied that her sister was pregnant. What a way to find out that your 16-year-old sister is pregnant.

Jamie Lynn Spears told OK! Magazine that she plans on raising the baby at home in Louisiana away from the bright lights of show business. Somehow I don't guess there is any place in Zoey 101's world for a baby anyhow.

BlondeBlogger sees it a bit from Spear's point of view. I was a pretty crappy teenager myself and never used condoms but that certainly doesn't mean I will even remotely seem to condone it. My son made it to the Marine Corps a virgin and we are trying to instill the same values in our girls as we did with him. The fact is that if either of them make it to 18 a virgin I will consider myself lucky, but either way they are damn sure going to use protection for the simple fact that pregnancy aside, there is some mean shit to be caught out there. It's not like it was 20+ years ago.

I ran across PayLoadz earlier this afternoon from a link that showed up on one of the sites I frequent and thought it was pretty cool. With quite a few of the Movabletype plugins that I have purchased over the last couple of months, they normally use PayPal or Google checkout for payment and then the files themselves are stored locally on whatever server is handy. That can be an issue if you need for people to download a product at any time. Payloadz offers download storage room for just about anything that can be stored digitally and their system works with PayPal as well as Google Checkout. Here's a press release from PayLoadz Downloable Goods eCommerce:

...of a white trash Christmas...

...just like the ones I used to love...

Guess who's pregnant?

No, it's not Britney Spears this time but her little sister Jamie Lynn Spears from Nick's Zoey 101. I guess someone forgot to tell them to put that cock in a sock before they did the wild tango.

According to CNN, Spears, who is twelve weeks pregnant now is advising other teens not to have pre-marital sex. Thanks honey but I prefer to get my advice from people who have successfully used their own...

After I finally crept off the couch from my nap yesterday afternoon the wife and I picked the girls up and went to the Olive Garden for supper. It was pretty good, particularly since she had received a gift certificate for Christmas. Other than the fact that it was somewhat cold in the are we sat in it was pretty good.

I was (and still am) pretty irritable last night and I am not sure why. I'm pretty stressed out due to work right now and I suppose that is the majority of it. Christmas is always pretty hard for me to get through. Part of that is the fact that the family is getting together and the only time off I normally have is after everyone has gone home. I think that this year my brother and his family will be spending a week with us. If so that will be pretty cool. Other than this coming Friday the 30th will be my next day off and it would be nice to see everyone and spend a bit of time together.

Damn, I am groggy this morning. I knew that after that nap I took I would have a hard time getting to sleep last night, so I took a benadryl around nine or so. I finally hit the sack about ten thirty and still have that fog in my brain.

Today and tomorrow are going to be fairly long days. My company's Christmas party is this evening, in Anniston, Alabama at around six, which puts me back home about nine PM. Tomorrow we are back to business as usual with the multi-unit manager meeting. I normally don't finish up with that until at least nine. I'm already dreading the next two days.

...

Have to start getting ready for work shortly. Luckily except for the last couple of hours I won't have to cook today. I do have a couple of interviews for hourly's to do this morning and other than that just paperwork and some prep for Christmas. I have this one guy coming in for an interview that put his application in a couple of weeks ago. The first time he came in I could have sworn he had on golf shoes. I don't know for sure but they certainly looked like it. No big deal except that he didn't look like a golfer. Probably picked them up at one of the consignment stores or something.

...

I disabled the twitter tweets completely on this site. While I thought they were cool there were some issues with them so the simple solution was to just take them off.

...

Received a nice Christmas present from my friend Yabu yesterday. A CD with quite a few pictures from the Blogtoberfest earlier in the fall. There were some pictures from prior to my arrival as well as some from the party Saturday night long after I had stopped taking photographs. Hell, I don't look as drunk as I was feeling...

Merry Christmas to you and your's dude!

Since I am only getting 3.5 days off during the four weeks around the holiday I shot out of there about 11:30 today. I hate it for them. I am already tired and Christmas isn't even here yet. I took care of the banking and paperwork and my relief manager is going to take care of the rest of the day for me. I think I will nap for a couple of hours then blog a bit. I wasn't sure if I would be able to get all of my stuff finished in time to get out of there but sometimes things just work out well.

I've already had two calls from work since I arrived home, so we will see just how long I actually get to sleep. I hadn't planned on posting anything other than this but then I got a CNN alert about Natalee Holloway so I ended up posting that last one.

Hey, oh by the way. See that thing about the Blogger's Choice awards on my side bar? No, OK here it is again...

Getting an early start this year, so go vote for my sexy ass and then I might shut up for a while.

No, probably not but maybe I won't harass you about voting for a while. Why should you vote for me? Because I am...just a pig. You just have to look at my children to know that I am the coolest, as Alice would say.

Time to nap...

It's funny sometimes how things can tie together. I have been listening to Queensryche's latest album tonight, which consists entirely of cover songs. Right around the time that 'Almost Cut My Hair' came on someone sent me an email with a link to the American Hair Loss Association. Why?...

I used to be extremely concerned about going bald and for lot's of guys it's a pretty serious subject. It doesn't really other me much anymore. I let what's left of it grow out during the winter and then just shave my head the rest of the year. Easier to take care of and I don't use much shampoo anymore...

Since I'm not doing much of anything else tonight I clicked the link...

The American Hair Loss Association is a non-profit organization that is set up to educate people about hair loss and hopefully help to make the lives of people that are affected by hair loss a bit better. There are so many different home remedies and 'snake oil' medicines out there that promise to restore your hair that creating a bit of public awareness about it can really help. It's a huge deal for some people. When I was younger I was very proud of my hair. I think I recently posted a couple of pics from the late eighties and early nineties when my hair was well below my shoulders. When I realized that my hair line was receding it was extremely depressing. While not as serious or harming as the degeneration of eyesight or arthritis, hair loss IS a medical condition and legitimizing it as such in the eyes of the medical community is a good thing.

With the advent of the World Wide Web it is much easier to find needed information and I would have to tell anyone that I know that might be looking for hair loss remedies to go check out the American Hair Loss Association and see what they have to say about it. Products that are legitimate and recommended by the AHLA display the seal shown on their web site. That's what you want to look for...

Dan Fogelberg has passed away at the tender age of 56. He has apparently been battling Prostate Cancer since 2004 and died peacefully at his home in Maine with his wife Jean by his side. He's not one of the huge names in rock but his music is instantly recognizable such as Leader of the Band...

It's been kind of a slow weekend here at the house but too darned busy at work. We are all gearing up for Christmas at work, which means lots of extra preparation to get ready for next week. I get asked all the time why we stay open for Christmas. This is normally by people who assume that nobody goes out to eat on Christmas day. That's about as far from the truth as you can get. Christmas is by far the busiest day of the year for us out of the entire year. Some stores aren't that much busier than a normal weekend but in the case of my three my business literally doubles. My slowest store will do about ten times the normal business, which is insane. On a normal Tuesday that store grosses about $500. Christmas Day last year it did $5000. We don't really make that much more money because we spend so much more money on payroll. Not only that but since it's busier, the margin of error for pricing mistakes and register errors goes up as well.

The managers are supposed to be starting their thaw and extra prep work today and I have to make sure to go around over the next week and verify it's getting done as well as get a couple more people working in some of the empty slots that aren't filled. Everyone works on Christmas Day with no exceptions, and even with that I have several empty slots in two of my stores simply because I can't just hire and train five or six more people just to let them go on January 2nd, which starts the slowest time of the year for me and the couple of months where I will be really cutting back on expenses.

It looks like we will be doing our Christmas on the 24th after all this year. As a store manager I would typically get two days off the week prior and Santa would visit the kids then but this year Carroll County is starting their Christmas break four days prior to Christmas and I just won't have any time off. Not only that but my brother won't be in town until around the 23rd. I think that most of the family is going to be here for it, which will be nice.

Once the holidays are over I need to get back down in the basement again and get some cleaning done. It is getting full and unorganized again and the perfect time to do some straightening up will be when we go to store the Christmas lights. I at least wouldn't mind organizing the back room. All of the Marine's stuff is stored in there as well as old furniture and decorations. I would kind of like to move some of my computer equipment out of the garage and into the back room, such as my wireless router and cable modem as well as my home automation equipment.

I am going to try and get out of the stores by four this afternoon. While I was just off on Thursday I spent seven hours in meetings and am tired. I want to spend some time at home with the girls, even if it's just watching them play and fooling around on the computer. It all depends on my staffing. I guess it's just that time of the year but I have had about eight people call out in my district over the last two days. Part of that is because the manager's put up with it.

It's time to start getting ready for work now, I will hopefully be back later this afternoon.

For awhile there it looked as if I was going to have to work the graveyard shift last night and I was, needless to say, not very happy about it. I had one of my managers off yesterday so I was running his store and at the end of the shift yesterday morning the cook let me know that she had given him her two weeks notice, that she was moving and needed to transfer but that she would work through the holidays. For the most part I believe her as she knows that I can keep her from working for us at all if she doesn't work through the end of the month. I already called the Division manager where she wants to go and we made this very clear. Then she asks for an advance on her paycheck because she is having to move.

I have this cool deal with the local bank. They don't lend cook fucking waffles and I don't lend money. It's a sweet deal and keeps me out of trouble. Don't get me wrong, I've given out five or ten bucks in gas money and there are a couple of long-term employees that I have even made personal loans to but those have always come out of my pocket. The last thing I am going to do is lend my company's money to some crack-addled bitch that is getting thrown out of her house. I would end up being out the money and endanger my job. It's just not my money to lend. Of course I didn't go into all of that, I just told her no. Then I started looking for a cook because at 7 am yesterday morning I knew she was going to hang me.

Nobody had an extra cook but one of the waitresses is married to a guy that works at one of my other stores and he agree about 3 PM to do it for me. Along comes 8 PM last night and someone else calls in for her, I call the dude and he's too drunk to work. Asshole.

I eventually found someone form a neighboring town and just had to come off with some gas money. Heck, the guy won't even be any overtime. I think I made it home by ten last night so it could have been much worse than it was.

Christmas week is about to start for me and I am certainly not looking forward to it. I was going to have the additional help of a couple of manager trainees but since another manager quit from the store I opened last fall they are going to end up taking one of my trainees. So much for that.

Some days I just wake up and wonder if the promotion was worth it. I certainly think so on payday but it's damn harder than I thought it was going to be. I am under much more scrutiny than I ever was as a store manager. As a manager they pretty much left me alone since I have done it so long. The only thing I really had to bitch about then was the crack-heads...

Like I said in the last post, I am a bit behind this week. I arrived home from meetings around 9:15 last night and while I posted some news and pictures I darn sure didn't feel like thinking...

I have finally redone the templates (mostly) for my tech site at TheAppDotNet, including the mascot I won in a blog contest a couple of months ago. I still have to add back in my blogrolls and whatnot but it's coming along very nicely.

I ended up spending the last seven hours of my only day off this week in a meeting in Anniston Alabama, which really sucked. It's about the last thing I want to do on my day off but I didn't feel like scheduling any of my managers off and then making them go to the meeting.

I may put up another post or two but I think I will be hitting the sack pretty soon. I am actually supposed to be doing a couple of reviews for ReviewMe but most likely am going to go past the deadline and just lose them. I hate losing money like that but have just not had the time the last couple of days and the deadline just sort of crept up on me.

I love coffee. Ever since I was about ten I have been drinking coffee and I don't go very long without drinking it. Heck, I even have it at night. I can usually drink it up until about eight PM or so without having any problems falling asleep. I don't know that I would consider myself a coffee connoisseur but I certainly love the stuff, hence my motto 'sleep is just a cheap caffeine substitute'.

I drink everything from canned Folgers as well as Waffle House and Starbucks coffee. Right now my favorite by far is Starbucks but that is because of consistency. Most of the gourmet flavors that I have picked up from the grocery store have a greasy oily taste that I just don't like. There are some places around to get great coffee though and I found one that I am going to have to try. Apres Cafe has quality exotic gourmet coffee on their web site that is available to order 24 hours a day. You can even call them on an 800 number listed on the web site as well. Along with coffees, they also offer tea and chocolates, a must at this time of year. Who doesn't like nice dark chocolate. Very soothing.

I am particularly partial to very dark roasts and am pretty interested in trying their Sumatra Mandheling as well as the Midnight Special, one of their darkest roasts. I would also like to try their Kenya AA Lenana. The brew has a deep complex aroma of smoke, grapefruit, berry, hints of butterscotch and dark chocolate.

Apres also offers recurring deliveries, subscriptions in other words, so that you never have to run out of your favorite brand of coffee. At the rate that I drink the stuff, if it's any good this will end up being a necessity for me. With recurring deliveries they also give 15% off on shipping via UPS ground, you get free samples of their coffees as well as other special offers on coffees and teas.

I'll let you know how I fare toward the end of the month and compare it to my favorites that I am able to buy locally.

Sponsored by Apres Cafe

I had a pretty long day yesterday so I just now approved some of the track-backs and comments that were caught in my spam folder yesterday morning. They should be showing up properly fairly soon.

We had our annual 'Santa's Sleigh' yesterday for the children of our employees. It's always been a pretty cool thing which we do but it has evolved over the last couple of years to become a party and even the adults show up now.

What we do is to get a list of all them employees children and their ages. What we used to do is rent an RV and then the division managers and area vice president would make three stops and the kids got their picture taken with Santa and got a gift. Nothing major. With a ton of kids we usually hit Big Lots or something like that because normally it's a couple of hundred gifts we have to get and we do have a budget we have to keep.

Over the last couple of years it has been turned over to the Division Manager. This year we blocked off the back of one of our parking lots and had a local company come out with the air walk things, popcorn, snow cones, we grilled hot dogs and had other refreshments and snacks. We got a hold of the company RV with our logo and actually hired a Santa instead of one of us trying to pass ourselves off. It was pretty cool and lasted about three hours.

The girls always enjoy it, as did the Marine when he was young. We have many pictures from Santa's sleigh with all three kids. I suppose I need to scan them at some point.

Although I am off today we have a mandatory holiday meeting I have to attend, which is one of the reasons I am off. I changed my manager's schedules so that they were all working as I didn't want to give them any excuse to not be there on time this afternoon. I won't hear anything new but have to attend anyway. It sucks because I only have one more day off between now and Christmas and that is next Friday. The Marine will arrive home next week as well. I have to pick him up from the Greyhound station next Friday morning.

Next week we have our company Christmas party in Anniston, Alabama for all of the managers and their spouses or girlfriends/boyfriends. It is usually pretty nice. There has only been one that turned out bogus and that was in 2003. My AVP rented a meeting room and had it catered. It ended up more like a meeting than a holiday get-together and there were so many complaints that we have had it at a restaurant each year since then. The manager's are used to bullshit like that but all of our spouses said they wouldn't be back if we were going to continue having it there.

It looks like I am going to have to take mine in January. It's either that or wait until April, which sort of pisses me off. I had hoped to take mine when the wife and kids were out in March but one of my managers already has reservations at Disney, so I decided to take it in the middle of February and maybe go someplace warm, but my newest manager is wanting to go on a cruise in February but was never able to nail down a date or give me any more information so I may just tell him he's stuck with whatever is left. I have been asking for vacation dates since early October because with ten managers and three districts, not to mention my boss, we have to squeeze everyone in.

My one manager that is going to Disney gave me her requests right away. Two of the three dates overlap what I was hoping to take but she has kids as well so I can work around her's. My other manager that has been in his store for awhile can't seem to give me anything definite. I have asked him several times over the last two months and I just called them all a few minutes ago and told them they had to bring me the dates this afternoon at our meeting. His question was 'all of 2008?'. Well, yeah, that is what I have been f'ing asking for the last two months. The other guy that is new I have only asked for them three times. He just told me it didn't matter so I am going to sit down shortly and make out a vacation schedule and they can just take any left-over dates that I haven't taken. I prefer to plan ahead and it irritates the hell out of me that they cannot seem to plan any farther than two weeks away.

I have spent quite a bit of time on Hilton Head Island over the last eight years or so, ever since our friend moved there with her kids and opened a business back in '99 or 2000. It's a pretty beautiful place but one thing I have noticed over the last few years is the amount of growth the area has had. The traffic is horrendous during the summer months. While she lives in Bluffton, only a few miles from the island, it can take more than an hour to get from her house to her work or anywhere else interesting on the island. That whole area north of Savannah has been experiencing tremendous growth over the last few years I guess, which is good for the local economy but it is starting to make vacations seem as crowded as going to Disney World.

Since I enjoy going to coastal areas so much it is a wonder I had forgotten about Amelia Island, in the northeast corner of Florida. It's only about fifty miles farther for me to drive from west of Atlanta than Hilton Head and it's also a really nice area. I wasn't aware until recently that they welcomed tourists as much as they do. Back in the seventies and eighties my mother was responsible for setting up company retreats for her boss and quite often they used Amelia Island. At the time they would fly down to Folkston (where my grandfather's family is from) in a little plane and then drive the rest of the way to the Island, which is just northeast of Jacksonville. Now you can fly into Jacksonville International Airport and rent a car, or just drive to the island. It's probably about five and a half hours for me, which isn't bad at all.

While I will be at work on New Years Eve, there are several things going on down there and it would certainly be a blast to open the new year on Amelia Island. One cool thing that's going on right now is that several different hotels as well as bed and breakfasts are participating in a lodging special which gives a third night free if you book two nights. Condé Nast readers voted Amelia Island one of the ten best islands in America and they are right. Plenty of restaurants and cool things to do, as well as some really nice golf courses.

Golf really isn't my thing but checking out old places and taking pictures is. Sometimes I drive the girls (and the wife) crazy with just wanting to tour neighborhoods and walk around. One of the really sad things about historic places like Amelia Island is that over the last 120 years so many areas have lost their charm with the commercialization but Amelia Island escaped that. The Fernandina Beach area has a 50 block historic district with many of the structures dating back to the 19th century, including many old mansions and cottages in the Victorian style.

One thing that lends to it's charm is the fact that since 1562 Amelia Island has flown under eight different flags, which may be the reason it's sometimes known as the Isle of Eight Flags

France, Spain, Great Britain, Spain again, the Patriots of Amelia Island, the Green Cross of Florida, Mexico, the Confederate States of America and the United States have all claimed Amelia Island at one time or another.  Wiki has some pretty cool stuff about what is known as the Amelia Island affair,

I would love to go check out Fort Glinch. The fort itself was built prior to the Civil War and the area is now a state park comprising just under 1100 acres. The fishing pier at Fort Glinch goes out 1500 feet into Cumberland Sound. There are a couple of campgrounds and there are also day use areas as well.

This weeks B4B Video Blogburst is up over at Freedom Folks, the body of the post is below in it's entirety but go check out their site for older weekly posts as well as other good stuff.

I have to go to a meeting/wrapping party tonight at six so this may very well be the only posting I do tonight. I am in the process of customizing my site at theapp.net so I spent most of last night pulling my hair out over there. If you've never been there, TheAppDotNet is my tech/entertainment blog. Nothing special but I am adding in some stuff to make it more community based rather than just a blog.

Anyway, on to the subject at hand...

In this edition...

LA Times caught lying about the invasion!

100% Preventable!: More American lives shattered by illegal aliens!

The Deportation Joke!: How much is too much?

Don't forget this week os the premier of our new half hour show hosted exclusively at TECHNOPATRIOTS.COM!

Rapist Rampage video provided by our friend LoneWolf!

This has been the Blogs For Borders Video Blogburst. The Blogs For Borders Blogroll is dedicated to American sovereignty, border security and a sane immigration policy. If you’d like to join find out how right here.

Technorati Tags: illlegal immigration, invasion, deportation, mexico, guatemala, rape, murder, strangulation, border security, la times, propaganda, lies, statistics, lying polls, techno patriots,

One of my favorite songs and certainly a rock & roll classic...

The Davies brothers certainly kicked ass and most of their music is timeless.

I mentioned the other day that I have been looking for a new monitor that will fit in the rolltop desk that I have for my computer now. Believe it or not but I think I found the one I want at Wal-Mart. Resolution is 720p and I should be able to hook up the HDMI with the right cables and adapters. I'm looking forward to being able to close my desk when the PC is not in use. The 19" LCD I have been using is too big for it, and it is starting to go out. I can't turn the monitor off for fear of it not coming back on again now. It tool forever for me to get working again the last time it was turned off.

Car Angel is a site that I came across that allows you to make tax deductible car donations (as well as other donations) that  they turn around and sell in order to make positive videos for teens and children such as anti-drug DVDs. They have given away almost two and a half million videos through this program.

Donkey Ollie is one of the characters used in some of their videos. He is a Christian children's animation used to send a message to kids.

No matter what you think about religion or different companies, donating  a car to a good cause such as anything anti-drug is a good deal. I myself donated my custom van a few months ago to the Alzheimer's Association. I wanted to get rid of it because of the expense and and it gave me a tax deduction along with the satisfaction of knowing that it would be used for a good cause.

A couple of my blogs are located at an entirely different web host than most of my sites. I decided earlier in the year when I was having so many problems here that I didn't want to open a new web site at the same location, so I went looking for a new web hosting choice. I talked to several other people about why they choose to use their web hosts and I also looked through several different services such as Web Hosting Choice.

Right from the front page at Web Hosting Choice you can do a search based on monthly cost, setup fees, amount of disk space and bandwidth. They also have recommended hosts along with links and what is available, links to reseller web hosting, a full directory with information on the different plans that are available as well as other information.

It looks like they have quite a few web hosts listed but none of the ones that I use happen to be in the list. As the site grows and matures I am pretty sure they will continue to add to the list.

Each web host, beside the information provided above also allows for user ratings so that you can look with confidence at what people are using for their sites and what type of rating that they give their own host. That was important to me when I was searching simple because I wanted to make sure that people were happy with their web host prior to moving a couple of my domains.

One of the things I share with my mother is a serious fear of spiders. While not as bad as her's I can't stand the damn things. I know that they eat all kinds of other nasties that I wouldn't particularly want around my house but that doesn't seem to alleviate my fears.

So what am I doing awake this fine evening? Watching Arachnophobia on TV. I suspect that I may be up late with nightmares...Hell, the hard part will be actually getting to sleep.

My grandmother used to have an old grandfather clock that she gave my mom and dad several years ago. Actually it was more like 30 years ago. Time flies when you're having fun I guess. I love that old clock but I am not even sure if it works anymore. Although clocks have pretty much stayed the same over the centuries, technology has made them much more accurate and I would love to have one of the Howard Miller Clocks like the one in the picture. We have a couple of clocks around the house but there is nothing as majestic as a beautiful grandfather clock.

The one in the picture is the Howard Miller Taylor Grandfather clock and lists for around nine grand but they currently have it online for $6300, which is a pretty steep discount. It sets around seven feet tall and is fairly heavy, around 135 pounds. It would look great right next to my entertainment center. A couple of years back when we picked up new living room furniture I made sure that the TV/entertainment center was more of a cabinet. It's pretty large and heavy and the doors on the front close so that you can't see the TV at all, which was the whole point of it. The coloring on this clock fits right in with the rest of the furniture in the living room.

One thing that I wasn't aware of when I started pricing clocks is the fact that you can pick different chimes for the clocks. You aren't necessarily stuck with a certain chime just because you like the look of a certain clock. The clocks blog has a bit more information on different chimes in this post about them and provides links where you can even listen to the chimes on the web site.

In addition to grandfather clocks they also sell mantel clocks,  wall clocks and all sorts of other things to spruce of your home decor. I wouldn't mind having a nice mantel clock to put over my fireplace. Right now it's full of Christmas decorations but they will be coming down next month and something other than the mirror that usually sits there would be nice.

It has finally rolled around to where I actually get a weekend off, which is going to be very nice. My schedule for the month of December is so messed up it's not even funny. I'm off this weekend of course and between then and the end of the month I think I am taking three days off including the 21st and 29th. I know those are the only two I managed to schedule myself off for but don't really remember when I am off prior to that.

Either way I will get to enjoy the weekend with the kids, which will be very cool.

I also managed to get out of my weekly meeting last night. The high school local to my stores asked me if I would participate in their advisory board for stuff like DECA and FBLA. Basically the advisory board helps them out and lets the school know where to focus some of the attention on what kids need to do to join the workforce. Teaching them to add and subtract and count back change are pretty damned high on my list since 90% of the young people I hire don't seem to have any of the skills. Of course times have changed. When I started working for my company the waiters and waitresses were not allowed to use calculators. If it was a particularly large order they could use the one in the manager's office, otherwise if you didn't know how to add you needed to go to work for someone else. Sounds harsh but it was effective. Now I am required to have several calculators in each of my restaurants. You can always tell if someone has been doing it for a while because they, as well as myself, can usually add up a guest check on paper faster than most people do it with the calculator and with less mistakes.

Why less mistakes? Because people that know how to add properly know how to do it and people that can't use basic simple math that they are teaching my girls trust the calculator and don't double check their math to make sure they have pushed the right buttons. The same thing goes for counting back change. I have more cash register shortages because people trust what the cash register says. The problem comes when they put in too much cash tendered. Knowing how to count back change solves that problem.

I spoke for a few minutes with one gentleman that knows a friend of mine that used to work with us. We talked about our mutual friend for a while. He isn't working with us anymore, he actually went into real estate a few years back and is doing pretty well for himself.

Shortly after making it home last night one of the cooks cut his hand open and while the manager went in to the store to get him taken care of and sent to the hospital I picked up one of my other cooks and took him on into work. I had planned on writing a bit last night but since I made it home after 7pm last night I just didn't feel like it.

With all of the posting I have done recently on Joran van der Sloot I have done a bit of reading and visiting of sites related to the Netherlands as well as Aruba. This sort of combines my love for different places with blogging. I haven't written about any kind of vacation spots lately so it was about time anyway.

Although they have a pretty decent Europe Hotel Guide I like visiting HotelsByCity.net for the pictures and links to other local sites in addition to blog posts and hotels.

The guide for Amsterdam has some pretty useful information about the city itself, links to cheap Amsterdam hotels as well as links to the cities home page and blog posts. While not on the top of my list of places to visit I wouldn't mind spending some time in Amsterdam just to check out the canals and architecture.

You can also find information about the weather in Amsterdam as well as other cities and local attractions in the city. Amsterdam is full of Museums and art houses and the night life in the city is one of the bright spots in Europe. In addition to art work there is also the museum of the resistance which I would like to visit one day. It provides information about the holocaust and World War II.

I don't know where to get one but I came across this picture a little while ago and got a good laugh out of it.

Still feeling a bit under the weather here. My birthday was laid back and pretty uneventful, which is just the way I wanted. Not even any phone calls from family, but 10 or 12 of my coworkers and ex-employees called during the day. We hung out and had burgers and peach cobbler and the girls and I watched TV on the couch while I drifted in and out, thus the lack of posts last night. After they went to bed I did stay up to watch the 3rd and last installment of Tin Man on SciFi. While not the best acting in the world I enjoyed the movie.

Hopefully the next three days will go well at work. I am not at all in the mood to deal with any bullshit. One good thing, although I will most likely have the normal weekly food cost meeting after work today I won't be stuck in one tomorrow until nine as I have been the last few Thursdays. I am trying to get out of the Thursday meeting entirely since the local high school is interested in me being on the FBLA advisory board and their meeting is tomorrow. Not much there, basically just let them know what it is that I need for them to do to prepare kids for jobs. Pretty easy stuff.

One of my hard drives went out last night, which sucks. My system has been slowing down for a few weeks and the extra HD pretty much bit the dust yesterday when I was trying to run Spinrite on it. It sucks because it had backups for most of my TV and movies on it. I can still recover most of it and will maybe work on that this weekend. I have a bunch of other ones I need to work on as well. If I can get some extra posting finished I will try to get that done as well.

Obviously nothing exciting is going on in my world today. It is my youngest's birthday today. RePete is five years old today. Happy birthday RePete.

Sifting through the photos I came across this one. It is probably the only picture from My 28th, 1988 in which I don't look particularly hung over to the point of dying.

No takers? Actually Elizabeth from Table4Five commented asking if I was going to tell ya'll which one is me, but that's about it.

I'm the goofy looking little guy 2nd from the left on the front row. Man, the sixties and seventies did nothing for us as ugly as the clothing is. The shirts aren't too bad but those pants and dresses have got to go. Most likely half of us are wearing Garanimals, although I don't know if they were around in 1973.

This is my last day of being 40 and I am going to spend it doing what I do every other day, working my tail off. Actually I am going to try and take it somewhat easy. I think I really must be coming down with something. I feel pretty much horrible. I am somewhat in a quandary there. The new state health codes that went into effect on December 1st say that I have to send anyone home from work with fever, runny nose, diarrhea, and various other symptoms. I makes perfectly good sense and I would normally do that anyway.

The problem is that I have a couple of the above but I damn sure am not sending myself home. Our official company line is that you don't work sick but the facts are that as management you are expected to work regardless and if you aren't productive on a shift you make your hours up prior to the end of the week. Although I have adjusted my hours a few times over the last couple of years I haven't taken a sick day since 2002 or maybe early 2003 and am not about to start now.

I won't be cooking today so there is no danger from that anyway, but it would darn sure be nice to just take a couple of days and stay in bed.

Since the other two district managers were off this weekend I went in to work for about two hours yesterday morning just so that we wouldn't overlap. I am off next weekend and I was sorely afraid that I would get screwed out of it if I wasn't careful. Next weekend we are having my youngest's fifth birthday party. Her's is actually Wednesday but the party is going to be next weekend.

...having trouble typing this morning. I think maybe I am coming down with something and am tired as hell. Had a hard time waking up this morning. I still feel dehydrated so that is probably part of it.

Although I went in yesterday morning I was back home shortly after everyone got out of bed. I stopped and bought breakfast at a fast food place on my way home. We have company this weekend as well. Since Michelle is in Honk Kong this week (lucky her) her youngest son is staying at home with her brother but he got to spend the weekend with us, which has been pretty cool.

It's back to work this morning, which is one of the reasons I am up writing so early this morning. Not that I wanted to get up. I feel like I worked my ass of when I really haven't gotten much done.

I am pretty scattered this morning, in addition to the fact that my computer was taken apart for most of the afternoon Saturday since I was moving furniture around, so I am packing several things in here before I go to work.

I had it taken apart because I was putting together my new desk with the help of my lovely wife. My parents recently moved and in doing so they gifted us with a couple of rolltop desks. The smaller of the two went to Pete and I have taken the larger. It is huge. Very nice though. Once I get everything set up I will post a picture or something. I am going to have to get another monitor soon, for a couple of reasons, one being that the damn desk won't close. The monitor is dying anyway. I can't turn it off because it takes forever hitting the power button to come back on. It was the Marine's and he bought it refurbished several years ago. I think I will try and get one of the 17 or 19 inch wide screen LCDs that will also double as a TV. Some of the ones that I have seen sit really low and I shouldn't have any problem getting the desk to close with it. Perhaps after the first of the year I can take care of that.

My old desk is sitting in the middle of the living room floor with what remains of my crap all over it. We have already filled two garbage bags with paperwork and computer parts that were jammed into every nook and cranny of the other one. It's amazing how much shit you can get in desk drawers. I am also storing most of my music and software CDs that are already copied to the hard drive or that I just don't need anymore. I filled an entire milk crate and a small box with them and another box with computer stuff that I will eventually need and don't want to get rid of.

Speaking of my parents, here are a couple of those old photos since I haven't posted any in the last couple of days.

That one is my dad, however long ago. Fifty years or so. The cat looks quite comfy don't you think?

That's my mom and dad and Reverend Cherry on their wedding day.

My Uncle Robby, my dad and two of his best friends whom all joined the Marine Corps at the same time and went to Vietnam together.

That would be my first grade class. Which one is me? Guess...Damn, those are some scary 1973 pants we have going on. The mean old bitch standing there had a problem with me being left handed and forced me to write with my other one until my dad found out. I guess they took care of that in pretty short order, particularly since they are both left handed.

Went to the Temple Christmas Parade yesterday. We had a pretty good time. We decorated one of the trucks that belong to a friend of mine at work and about ten of us, as well as another five or six kids, participated. We all had a great time, particularly RePete who thoroughly enjoyed tossing candy and bracelets out to the folks watching the parade.

I saw quite a few people I know, possibly including Slobokan. I can't say for sure since I don't know him personally but I would swear I saw him in that hat right in the middle of town.

They also had the tree lighting yesterday evening although I didn't attend. I was going to but ended up getting involved in moving that furniture around. I went out shortly before six to pick some stuff up at the store and almost stayed since the tree lighting was going to be at six but I knew that I was already going to be staying up too late. Not only that but we were babysitting a couple of the neighborhood girls so that their parents could go out last night. I didn't want to leave the wife with a house full of kids.

I suppose that's about it for the morning. I am going to spend the day in my store with the newest manager who just completed his first four days in his new store. Actually he is off today and tomorrow thus the reason for me being there. He is a bit scattered and it will take some work for me to keep him focused but the main thing is that everyone likes him. The last thing I needed was somebody else to run off my employees. And he can cook, at least somewhat. It's going to make the next two days much easier. I normally spend my two days in that store doing damage control. Now I can just go in and do my job. Hopefully I can get the heck out of there and be home by four this afternoon.

It has been pretty interesting the last few days online as well. Everyone is searching for pictures of the so-called 'teen porn star' so I have gotten several thousand hits from that. Not that most of them stick around since I don't have anything but news on that subject, but some of them do.

It has driven my Real Rank up to 41, but it hasn't made me any more damned money :(

I hope everyone has a great day. Here's one of my favorite songs. I was just listening to this and decided I needed top post it for your enjoyment.

So have you read about Gillian Gibbons yet? She is a teacher in Sudan at a private school popular with wealthy Sudanese and expatriates and for a school project in which she was teaching about animals and their habits she had a stuffed bear which she asked the students to name. The decided on Mohammed, most likely in honor of their prophet. The Sudanese government and it's shitheel citizens don't agree however and some of them even want her executed. WTF? Execute her because her class named a stuffed bear Mohammed?

Leaflets distributed earlier this week by Muslim groups condemned Gibbons as being an infidel and accused her of polluting their children's mentality by her actions. I guess had she been teaching them how to make bomb vests they would have given her a medal...

One of the things we discussed in our five hour meeting on Thursday evening (can't get enough of those!) was Christmas decorations in the stores. I am going to have to make sure that my managers follow our instructions over the next couple of weeks and pull down anything that isn't appropriate. With the fact that our kitchens are right out there in the open we have to be very careful as to what gets hung up. No lighting strung from weird places, no garland, etc...They are allowed to put window clings on the globe lights but NOT on the windows, and a small tree is acceptable. I already know one of the managers has gone out and spent $60 on a tree that's taking up way too much room in her store. I am interested in seeing if they make her take it out.

I figured we could get a table top tree for each of my stores and put it on the utility cart out by the jukebox and just put a larger skirt or tablecloth on it to cover the cart. That way it's not in the way and not likely for anyone to trip over and hurt themselves.