rptrweek
So, there I go again, not posting frequently. I’ve wanted to write something for a while, but I haven’t been able to find any time to do so. A lot has happened since June 6 and today between school ending, working, and having a friend over.
First off, let me apologize to those of you who tried accessing my blog over the past few days. I needed the extra long ethernet cord that the server is on for something I’ll explain a little further down the post.
My last week of school was the week of the 14th of June. I didn’t really have any exams, I just had to go into school for the days. It was kinda pointless, but it allowed for a lot of time to get yearbook signatures and such.
On the 19th, it was decided that one of my North Carolinian friends, John, should come up here to CT to hang out. He got on a train on Saturday and arrived here on Sunday at an ungodly 4:50 AM.
The first thing we did was go to work. I couldn’t ask for the shift off that late, so he decided to come with me. Luckily, I was just putting together newspapers that had been delivered over night and it wasn’t anything too crazy like ringing. After that, we slept and watched TV for the rest of the day.
On Monday, after I picked up my cap and gown from school, we both went down to NYC to see Lee (A Floridinian [?]). John and I took a train down at 12PM and got in around 2PM.
After delicious pizza at Big Nick’s, we (me, John, Lee and his mom) decided to roam around Central Park for a while. We eventually made our way back to the 5th Avenue Apple Store, and after beating the crowds, went back to Central Park. We went to the Chess & Checkers center and played Uno for a while. We then walked over to Times Square, where we laughed at knockoff electronics (obviously faked iPods, scuffed and shady-looking notebooks), bought pretzels and hotdogs, and eventually made our way back to Grand Central to catch the 8:04 PM train back home.
View the rest of the NYC pictures here: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2014730&id=1085910137&l=764872643c
On Tuesday, we stayed at my dad’s house and watched TV. I started working on my dad’s T42, which needed to be wiped and XP reinstalled. I had to work from 4-8, which was the main reason we didn’t do anything all day. On my way to work, I found a Mac SE on the ground at the bus stop, which I took back to the house. On Wednesday, John and I went back to my mom’s to try it out and see if it worked (it did). It’s full of a bunch of old documents and stories. It has a 120MB HD, 1.5MB RAM and a floppy drive. After this, we went to Subway and got lunch, then to Shaw’s for some mid-week grocery shopping.
Thursday was kind of busy; I had graduation practice at 9 AM, and then the ceremony at 6 PM. I was able to get an extra ticket, so John was able to come with us. Two hours later, we went to Dairy Queen and then a chinese takeout place.
Friday wasn’t really all that special; we went out to lunch and came back home, because I hurt my foot. My dad has these two rottweiler puppies, and they’re still really really young and playful and wanting attention. So whenever you go in a room with them, they’re all over you, which I’m not a huge fan of. So, when I had just gotten out of the bathroom and went to the kitchen door (where there was a gate up to keep them in one room), they jumped up on the gate, and I just waited. Eventually, they walked back over to the other side of the kitchen, but as soon as they heard me step over the gate, they started running back. I ran towards the stairs and tried to go up pretty quickly, but I lost my footing and all my weight went on my left foot, which was twisted at a 90-deg angle. Ow. So I didn’t feel like walking too much that day, hence the reason we only went to lunch and back home.
Later that day, there was an alleged huge thunderstorm passing through the state. It looked like it was headed straight for us, but we didn’t get too much rain; just lotsa thunder and lightning. Here’s a great video of a buncha lightning strikes.
After that, my mom brought us KFC for dinner, and we spent the rest of the night packing and cleaning up. His train was leaving at 12:41, so we dropped him off sometime between 12 and 12:30 am.
So yeah, that was my week with John. Very fun to have him up here at my dad’s house.
That’s it for this post; thanks for reading!
Saturday shens
So what if it’s been 4 days since I last posted? I’m freaking busy. 
Let’s start off with a couple stories from work this past week.
On Tuesday, the only task I had to do was continue to put up electronic tags in one of the frozen aisles. It’s not really hard, but kinda boring and repetitive. Makes time go by slower than normal. However, it gives you a chance to hear how intelligent some people really are.
Like for example, this one group of girls walked by the frozen breakfast foods case, and one of them said, “Ooh, look, sausages. I like sausages. Do we need sausages?” Another one said, “Sausages are gooooood. We need to get some sausages.” At this point I was grinning at the frequency that they said the word ’sausages’, but the last one put the icing on the cake. She goes (narrated exactly as spoken), “Man when I’m at mah boy’s house, his sausage be blaaaaaaazinnnnn. It’s like da best kinda meat he got!” I tried so hard not to laugh out loud at that point.
2 hours, a 15 minute break and a tired+irritable Ian later, a father and his daughter came down the aisle. The daughter said, “Daddy! Look at the ice cream!” The father replied, “I don’t care. It’s ice cream. You don’t know how much I don’t care about ice cream. Hell, this kid prolly doesn’t even care about ice cream. ’scuse me, sir. Do you really care about ice cream? Be brutally honest.” I said, “With all-due respect, sir, I could honestly care less about anything having to do with this store right now.” I was expecting him to get my manager or something, but instead, he just said, “Well played.” And walked off.
Last story: Today while I was working on price tags in HBC, a man came up to me and asked if we carried cucumber+melon body wash. I said I wasn’t sure, as HBC wasn’t my department, but I’d take a look around. He then told me that he was taking care of a 102-year old woman who really wanted this body wash, so I tried a little harder to find it. Usually, I would have pointed the customer in the direction of the product and said, “If we have it, it’ll be over there.” This time, though, I got up off the floor and walked around the whole department until I could find it. The man was really happy we were able to find it for her, and I felt really good after. Hope she enjoys it.
I was originally going to continue this post, but a poetry anthology awaits assembly by me. I’ve had the project since the beginning of May, and even though I have a bunch of poems to go in it, I still have to write a few things for the book itself, find pictures, and put it together. Before Monday. Bleh.
Oh, well. Thanks for reading!
Keep checking back!
I haven’t forgotten about this blog! Things get crazy when school+work start up again. I’ll be out soon enough though, and posting more often.
Also, I had a couple customer stories from work tonight, but I left the paper on which I wrote them down in the office. I’ll get them at some point.
I’ve had enough of silly love songs.
…with damned silly love songs. grahhh.
So, I was at work today. I went to work on some electronic price tags. Now for those of you who don’t know, each price tag receives RF signals from antennas in the ceiling of the store, and signals are sent out when you do certain things with an application on the Symbol MC9090 guns. Every now and then, the daily/weekly status checks can get backed up (a large number of tags unable to be reached [dead batteries, tag out of reach of signal, etc], system crash, etc.), which inhibits you from doing work with the tags until the system is reset. Which can’t be done at store-level, you have to call the help desk.
So, I called and waited while an analyst came on the line. I explained the problem, and he placed me on hold. Cue “Silly Love Songs” by Paul McCartney. So I waited a few more seconds, and the analyst came back on the line and asked me 1 more question. I answered, and he put me back on hold. Again, I heard Silly Love Songs, but not from where it should have been from playing all along; it started -over-. So, I waited for the duration of the time it took for the song to play, and was relieved it was over. But, the song freaking started over. ashslfgasaslkfjasklhflasjfgasklf. At this point, the analyst said he needed to transfer me to 2nd level support, so he did. Same music. I heard the song twice before I spoke to someone else. They also put me on hold once, and came back twice during the music. Resulting in the song starting from the beginning for a total of 7 times since I started the call. Why don’t they have any more music?!!
Anyway. My day was pretty nice. I went in at 7, printed the unit stickers for the price changes, which were -very- low this week. Normally on a Saturday, there’s anywhere between 150-400 stickers that have to print. Today, there were only 57 total. 
The store was very very slow today, too. Consequently, I didn’t have to ring at all, which was a big plus. The only customer interaction I had was helping someone reach something on a high shelf, which usually happens once or twice a shift.
These are the kinds of days I don’t mind working 9-hour shifts. It’s the Saturdays, the first weekend of the month, which is both usually the biggest batch of price changes and the day the EBT cards are filled. And I’m only scheduled 4-5 hours. And I’m called down to ring when I’m on my measly 15-minute break, and the CDH doesn’t seem to care. Glad it wasn’t one of those days today.
So now that I’ve written a blog post for today, I might go and do something useful…like…clean my desk? Yeah. I’ll do that.
Thanks for reading. Later!
Sore throat + server picture
Since Wednesday, I’ve had what I thought was strep throat. I had a freaking -painfuly- sore throat, but absolutely no other symptoms of sickness. I couldn’t swallow without the help of Tylenol, and even then it still hurt. By bedtime yesterday, I couldn’t even swallow water.
I found out today that it wasn’t strep, but just a viral infection. So that’s good, not as serious as I thought. Still hurts like a bitch though.
However, I did accomplish something during my couple of days being sick. The main reason you’re viewing this blog is that I didn’t have anything to do while I was home, so I configured Windows Server 2008 on my GX260 and got WordPress up and running. The machine is in the living room right now, where our main printer is also located. I have the GX260 sharing the printer out to the network, and the living room is the easiest place for people to pick up printed crap.
click the image to see full-size
So yeah. That’s it for the first real blog post. There’ll definitely be more to come between school finishing and the continuing stories of Stop and Shop. Until next time, don’t get strep.
New server!
Hey everyone! Long time no see
I’ve moved this site from a paid host to my home server, currently an Optiplex GX260 with Server 2008. I want to see how well this works out, and if it’s even worth it to keep purchasing a hosting plan.
I’m still tidying things up on here, and I’ll write an actual blog post later tonight or tomorrow after work. I’ll also eventually bring back some of the posts from my old WordPress installation.
Until then, thanks for reading! Stay tuned