Hey all. This was a first attempt at a blog, and I found I liked it, so I got myself some hosting and a domain name. The site’s name has changed to Darkened Eyes, and it can be found at http://www.darkenedeyes.com so anyone who actually reads this should go there instead for my latest updates. This will probably be the last post I put on this site, but I will leave it up in case I need anything from here or someone stumbles across this while trying to get to the other site.

Peace all, and I’ll see you at Darkened Eyes!

Another Tuesday, another day off. I’m currently sitting over at Stacy’s Mom’s house with Emmie because she’s sick and couldn’t go to daycare today.

Last night at work was hellish. It was busy beyond belief until about 9 pm, but even though it tapered off then I still didn’t get out of work till almost 10:30 because of how much stuff needed to be downstocked and cleaned up. The department was a wreck until Dan and I got done with it.

I finally picked up a new DVD burner for the tower last night, because the one I had was having ‘issues’ insofar as it, for some strange reason, stopped reading CDs altogether. The drive read DVDs fine, but no CD I put in the stupid thing would read. I picked up a Samsung SATA burner last night and it works like a dream. Reads everything fine, and no issues with it being recognized.

I’m thinking it’s time to finally wipe out the OS on the laptop and either reload Vista clean (I had installed it originally over the top of a very heavily skinned and tweaked XP install, and some of the tweaks/programs wouldn’t uninstall once I got Vista on the unit), or run a dual-boot config with either OSX86 or some flavor of Linux. Linux would run great on this machine, being only 2(ish) years old.

Anyway, I’ll post another blog later on, might include some random pictures of something if I can find something that’s camera-worthy.

Blogged with Flock

I’m seriously considering throwing in the towel on finding myself another girlfriend. A few of the reasons are completely practical, though some of them are slightly strange. First, I have very little time to myself the way it is, and having someone else to fawn over is something that would seriously eat into my internet/gaming time. Second, I can’t stand vapid girls. Sure, they may look good, but when you are having a conversation with something that has the IQ of a can of compressed air it gets real old, real quick.

Third, all the girls I seem to be attracted to are already with someone. It’s a curse I can’t get over anymore, apparently. In the last 3 months I’ve met at least 3 girls that I would kill to be with, who already have boyfriends, and I can’t afford to bury the bodies and pay for therapy. Fourth, I’m nearing that point where I just don’t care anymore. I’m alone, I get it, I’m so used to it that having someone there for me/with me would be so different from my normal routine that I don’t know what I’d do, honestly.

But enough about that, on to the good stuff!

A friend of mine and his friends have set up a new podcast (I’m thinking that they did so just because they could), you can check it out here: http://www.growingupgeek.net

I’ve been playing Lost Odyssey on the Xbox 360, and my gods above is this game beautiful. Incredible scenery, amazing characters, exquisite detailing, and terrific voice acting. I haven’t found one bad thing about this game yet. I seriously recommend it to any Xbox owning RPG fan.

I’m trying to figure out what to do with my life. I’m not really content sitting at “home” in my parents’ house, working a retail job selling computers to stupid and/or ignorant people, and not going anywhere. I really can’t afford to change any of that though. I don’t have a degree or any certifications yet, and I can’t afford (nor do I have any inclination towards) going back to school, paying for said certifications, or really even just living on my own again. I’d have to find someone to have live with me, and that is just something that I really don’t feel like being dicked over on again.

Although, if I could end up living with a hot single geek girl who had no problem with a ‘no pants when noone else is here’ rule, I would snap that up in an instant….

I’m signing off before my mind wanders into places it shouldn’t go this late at night.

Ended up takin a personal day today. Really didn’t feel like goin into work, combined with the fact that the car wouldn’t start till 2 hours after my shift would have started (ah, the wonders a good swift kick does for mechanicals) basically kept me home. I am sorely tempted to go up there to pick up Lost Odyssey though, but I don’t want to either get suckered into working the rest of the night (seeing as how I’m opening tomorrow) or getting yelled at for not coming in, which is more likely. Our store management isn’t real big on the whole “being understanding about stuff” thing. With them it’s like “Your car’s broken, your leg’s bleeding, and your house is on fire? You better find a way to make it here in 20 minutes when your shift starts.”

I don’t entirely understand it. Yes, I know we’re short-staffed. We always are because of this CA program. They take labor away from each department, throw it together, and create a group of employees that wander around the store trying to help every department at once. More often than not, however, there’s only one or two on, and both of them get busy in the Home Theater department. So…that screws the rest of the store. Whose idea was this again? Oh, right…Corporate.

What does it say about our department when they can only schedule 3 people on all day? One in the morning, one as a mid-day cover/transition cover, and one closer? It means that when it’s dead, we’re bored off our asses and getting yelled at because everything’s dusty/disorganized. When it’s busy, we’re getting yelled at for not helping all the customers because there’s only so many of us and people are impatient twits.

Anyway, I’m off to pick up pizza for me, Stacy, and Emmie. I’ll post another rant about something else later on tonight.

Wow. It is white beyond white outside. I really think I am gonna call off work tomorrow, especially if this shit turns to ice. I am NOT risking myself getting to the Blue Box because they think that “Oh, it’s not THAT bad, the highways are fine and I came from Allentown” like they gave me last time. Screw that. Have you yackoffs in manglement SEEN the side roads? Plows are doing no good here. If I left I’d slide all the way down the hill I live on.

Now, the only problem with this is one thing: Lost Odyssey launched today, and I didn’t know about it. I want this game badly enough that I’m seriously contemplating driving in the snow up to WalMart to pick up a copy before the snow itself melts and becomes an icy wasteland for cars. I really need a life or something, you think?

Anyway, I’ll post here tomorrow as well as on Twitter with my status of work or non-work, as well as what I plan to do with the day if I don’t go. Which will most likely happen.

Peace out, y’all.

Well, here I am, back at this again. I’ve recently purchased a few items, some of which I’ve posted about here, and now I have a new one to talk about.

I just picked up (for myself, and Stacy got one too) the Samsung SCH-I760 smartphone. This phone is pure awesome. Sliding front with the 12-key numberpad, a directional navigation controller, touchscreen, and it slides sideways to expose a full QWERTY keyboard. Heaven for text messages or Twitter updates ^_^

I’m not entirely sure I’m gonna keep the data plan that I had to sign up for for 3 months to get the insane deal the dude at the Verizon store gave us, but at the rate I’m going, I’m not gonna be able to give it up. I’d have no problem with it, except that it’s 40 bucks extra a month, per line. Which sucks. But it might be worth it, I’ll have to see.

Anyway, I’ve really got nothing else to say here for this post, so I’ll end it with this: Smokey Bones’ ribs are still great!

Remember that long ranty neat-o post from yesterday? The one where I mentioned the receiver I was planning on getting?

It’s now sitting under my Xbox 360 and next to my new TV. And it is indeed glorious. The sound quality is better than the original sound-hub I had hooked up to these speakers. Only downside is my subwoofer uses standard speaker wire instead of RCA cabling, which the new receiver uses. But this shall be rectified eventually. For now I’ll just have a 5.0 system instead of a 5.1 system.

Might post a bigger blogrant later, as I’m currently too busy playing with the new equipment to do this ^_^

The title of this post cannot be more true. I am now the proud owner of a 26 inch LG LCD television, and it is glorious. I have it connected to both my PC and my Xbox 360 (since we got some in today and I managed to get my defective one replaced with a newer model with HDMI), and once I get my tax return I’ll be able to get the receiver I’m planning on purchasing, so that I can have HDMI audio AND video coming from the xbox. The PC will probably stay connected with standard mini-stereo to RCA conversion, although the board DOES support optical audio out, so I may just end up buying a cable for that too, when I get the receiver.

The TV itself is just sweet. It’s not too big so it doesn’t seem like it fills the room up (because my current bedroom is quite tiny, me not living on my own and all), and it’s not too small (I’m upgrading from a 19 inch Gateway LCD monitor, which I’m keeping hooked up to the tower as a dual-display unit). It’s quite possibly perfect. 720p HD capable too, so if I ever decide to invest in a Blu-Ray player (because F*CK HD-DVD!) I’ll already be ready. But that will probably have to wait till next year.

The only thing stopping me from buying the receiver right now (other than the fact that the store is closed because it’s 2 AM), is that I haven’t gotten my federal tax return back yet. It should be deposited either Friday or Monday, and I’m hoping for Friday (because that means I can just pick the unit up after work and not have to wait like the impatient schmuck I am ^_^).

This also means that once this massive check hits my bank account that I can finally pay off that freaking credit card that’s been haunting me for almost 2 years now. I ALMOST had it paid off once, and then bills and stuff started piling up where I was living and I ended up not being able to pay any more towards it, so it got back up to where it was.

But now, I will be free!

Also, this means that in exactly 2 weeks (from today, Friday, the 1st), I will be 23 years of age. Celebrate, people!

Ok. I know this is corny, but I have to do it or else I’ll end up snapping and killing someone. Probably online, in a video game, but still.

GET ME OUTTA HERE!

I’m serious. I’m stuck in what seems to be a dead-end job at a retail store. I have no degree because I have immense difficulty in classroom situations (being a hands-on learner, combined with the 2 facts of Fellow Student Idiots and Idiotic Required Courses [why any sort of public speaking course should be mandatory for any sort of technical field is beyond me]), I have no certifications because of lack of funds from working said dead-end job, and I’m not really into the whole ‘the customer is always right’ craze, because most of the time, they’re not. Customers, by general definition (not specific people, but customers as a whole), are idiots. They don’t KNOW what they want or need, and that’s why we’re here. Then they say “Well, that’s too expensive, so I’ll get $crap_that_won’t_do_anything_I_want instead.” Then they come back complaining that it, gasp, didn’t do what they want.

Unfortunately, the only real things I’m decent at are computer repair/support, and webdesign (and even that one is sorely lacking in both content and practice lately), and there’s no market in this area really for someone who doesn’t have some sort of corporate backing. Plus if I got caught, I’d get fired, which would make things hella worse.

So I appeal to nobody, everybody, and even the great and powerful Anonymous. Just to make myself heard, you know.

Well, here I am again. It seems like this is going to be a habit for me, now. Just returned home from work a few minutes ago, decided I’m gonna order a cheesesteak but I’m trying to decide where to order from. Work, being work, was painfully slow all day long. The store had barely any people in it, and this makes for a LONG day for us menial floor workers.

I also received my feedback from my interview for our open Agent on Deck position, which I sadly did not obtain. Not that I thought I would, mind you. There seems to be a pattern here. I’ve interviewed for at least 5 positions in the store over the past 2 years, and I haven’t gotten a single one. And do you know where most of the problem lies? Or at least where they SAY the problem lies? My appearance.

Yes, folks, it’s mostly the hair. For those of you who don’t know or have never seen me in person/picture form, I have longish hair (reaches to just below my shoulders), which has a nasty tendency to curl/twist/snarl itself, making for a rather unenjoyable experience trying to tame it. The other major problem is that, being that my body is the way it is, a lot of deodorants and antiperspirants tend not to work for me. Now, I don’t know about anyone else, but there’s very little I can do about THAT situation. I’ve tried different brands, I’ve tried both spray/roll-on, I’ve tried praying to dark gods under a new moon. Nothing works, so far. I’ve still got a few brands to go to try, but if they don’t work I really don’t want to have to check into prescription deodorants.

So it seems like I’ll be stuck on the sales floor of Best Buy for yet another undetermined amount of time, unless Ray can find some way to actually get me an interview down at his store for their Double Agent spot. It seems like any time he can interview me, I’m scheduled at our store. I’ll have to see if he can do something like a phone interview or some such.

I think this is where I’ll end this for now, maybe I’ll post something tech-related later tonight. Peace out, y’all.