Moving Up…maybe

Levi told me that there may be a position open in the Home Theater Installer team at work, and that he’ll get to pick who gets it more than likely.  He told me that I was his first pick if I wanted it.  He told me that it would be a “Helper” job, which put me off of it.  I told him that I would be overjoyed, eager to join the install team, but only if I’m an actual installer, not a “helper”.  I spent too long at Food Lion being the lame version of something good.  I spent a fucking year as a janitor/bagger, and all I wanted to do was be a cashier.  I ended up doing everything a cashier does, but I was still a bagger, I was still the bitch.  I want to be an installer, it’s something I could do, it’s something I could do very well, but if I’m going to do it, I want to do it for real.  I want to be an “installer”, not “that guy that drives the installer around and does install work too”.  I don’t want to be a lame version of something anymore.  He said that he could probably make it work, but even if he couldn’t get it like that off the bat, that I may want to take it anyways, and I may be able to come into a real position in time.  I don’t know.  I should do it regardless.  It’s going to be a pay raise for sure he tells me, and I’d have a set schedule each week.  I should just suck it up even if I have to be the “lame version” of Levi.  I mean, it’s more money and hours, it’s a set schedule, and it’s me and Levi out of the store on our own working.  It’s a formula for fucking good times.

I’ll take it, I’m just hoping I can get it on favorable terms.  Shit, I hope I get it at all.

It’s Tuesday

Go vote.  Who for doesn’t matter, just vote for someone.  Learn the issues, learn who stands for what, and vote for them.  The future is determined by those who show up.

Show up.

Ebb and Flow

Nothing worth writing about has been happening, really.  I have a birthday coming up, which will make me 21 years old.  I could write a big piece on how I visioned that I’d be someone more important when I was a kid, but all it would do is get me depressed, so I won’t.

Work is going alright I guess, nothing major happening.  I’ve been away from it for four days now, I work again this afternoon.  These tiny vacations are kind of awesome, because I get time off, and I’m absent for just long enough that I’m kind of detatched from any problems that have developed over the time I was gone; but I’m not gone long enough to be out of touch with them.  They’re not my fault, but I still get credit for solving them.

I don’t have anything to write about right now.

Dead Space

…is awesome.  You will shit 9001 bricks.

Being a Gamer is Expensive

There are so many good games coming out that I want to; nay, have to play that I don’t know how I’m going to gather the resources to enjoy them all.

Wrath of the Lich King is dropping in a little under a month, and the recent refresh of the game with the 3.0 patch has made the game lots of fun again.  I’ve always felt kind of bad playing WoW when there are so many other great games, but with the changes they’ve been making to the game it’s always been justified.  They’ve been adding and tweaking constantly, so that there’s always something new to do, always something new to play with.  I really is a great game that’s served up several games worth of content.  I see myself spending lots of time in the new continent, as the Undead/Scourge storyline has always been the most interesting in my opinion.

Dead Space came out of fucking nowhere.  I knew about it for sure, but I hadn’t actually watched any of the media or trailers for it.  I watched an hour-or-so long animated comic last night, and it was fucking brilliant.  The story and setting are so cool and interesting, that they could honestly make it a movie, book, game, comic, whatever, I just want to experience the rest of the story.  I’m under debate as to which version of the game I should buy.  PS3/360 versions are out now, and I can buy one of them today, and play it tonight.  There is a PC version, though, which is $10 less, and is a PC version.  I’ve got a good gaming computer, so playing it on that is probably going to be awesome-er.  I’ll debate at with myself at work today.

HotShots Golf: Out of Bounds came in the mail from Sony, which is something I didn’t even know was coming.  I’ve always liked HotShots, it’s a fun, easy to play game that just happens to be a golf game.  Not much to say other than that.  I haven’t played it yet.

Left 4 Dead is also out in a month, which Ben, Gene, and myself are probably going to be playing a lot.  Lots of testers and gaming press say it’s a fucking blast.  I don’t know what it is about zombie games that makes them so damn cool.  Can’t wait for this one.

Gears of War 2 is out sometime soon, though I’m not sure exactly when.  I think it’s sometime November.  I want it, but not as bad as I want the above.  I’m mainly in it for the multi-player; Gears has a cool story I guess, but it has much better multiplayer.  I kinda want to pre-order it so that I can get a golden Lancer, but I don’t want to commit to buying it if I have all of these other games coming up in the same time frame.

Fallout 3 is another game that I want, but I’m not following very closely.  It looks to be shaping up as Oblivion: Guns, which is fine with me.  I think it looks cool, but again I haven’t seen much media or watched any gameplay footage.  I hear it got leaked, but I’m not really interested in hunting it down.  I’ll grab the PC version when it comes out, if I’m not broke by then.

I also have a huge backlog of games that I own but haven’t played through yet.  I’ve still got Rogue Galaxy, Persona 3, Folklore, Disgaea 3, and others.  I have tons of fucking games to burn through.  Shit, I’m going to run out of time before I run out of money.

Create

I’ve been thinking of putting serious time toward learning a digital craft.  Programming, Flash, or Web Coding/Design being the three I could possibly pick up.  I’m not an artist, so when I say “Flash” I really mean Flash apps, like art-minimal games (of which I have many ideas) or web-apps.  Flash would require a decent grip on programming concepts, as ActionScript runs the show.  I’d also need a site to publish the creation on, which leads to web design.

I guess I’d really have to get decent at all three if I wanted an on-line presence.  I could just do web design, which is something I loved doing in high school.  Hell, I don’t know.  I doubt I have the self discipline needed to make this worthwhile.  I was thinking if I did some web work just for fun, and started showcasing it on a good looking site, I could open up for commision or consulting.

It’s a pipe dream I have sometimes.

Remixed

I’ve totally changed the layout of my room.  The only thing that didn’t move was my huge computer desk.   The layout still isn’t like I want it, but I have to work around not having a TV, meaning I have to have my couch close to my computer monitor.  I’m also using my furniture in the least efficient way possible.  I’m using the bookshelf from my dresser as a floor shelf, I’m using the dresser as a computer desk, and my computer desk is just covered in the spillover from everything.  There are a couple problems in my way if I want to achieve exactly what I want.

• I have two computers, when I only need one
• I have no dedicated TV, so…
• …my console games must follow my monitor
• I have no bookcases

 

Problem one is my iMac and my PC competing with each other.  It’s really gotten to the point where I just use my PC for everything.  The only thing the Mac really holds over my PC is the ease at which you can manage my iPhone.  Music, Calendars, Contacts, and bookmarks sync both ways without me having to do anything special.  On the PC I have to mess with motherfucking Outlook.  Not express, $100 OUTLOOK.  That’s bullshit.  Also the Mac versions of any Apps that are both Win/Mac always, ALWAYS kick the shit out of their Windows version.  It’s overall a lot better computer.  It’s just that it’s failing video card and aging hardware have made it so that continuing to use it is an exercise in being stubborn.

Problem two is just what it says.  I don’t have a TV, which means I have no way to play my Xbox or Playstation without keeping them tethered to my computer monitor.  It’s a bigger problem than it sounds like.  Mainly because to play the Xbox or Playstation I have to give up the computer, and if I ever want to move the computer somewhere, I have to make space for the consoles and all their baggage.  It’s a hassle.

I have a shitload of media.  Game carts and disks, DVD cases, computer games, books, all that shit.  I have no bookcases, which means it all just piles everywhere, in between everything.  It makes everything messy and look like shit.  It’s fucking stupid that I have all these games and they end up piled and stacked because I have nowhere to put them.  It makes it look like I don’t value them at all, when really I just don’t have anywhere to put them.

I don’t know.  I think I need to re-reorganize, like this was just a beta test, and the gold master is coming tomorrow.  I have tomorrow off, so this can be my project for the day.

Never enough time to do all the nothing you want

I’m here on my day off and I don’t know what to do with myself.

I played some Team Fortress 2, listened to some music, watched a few videos, but I’m just burning time up.  I can’t think of anything to “do”.  I want some kind of project.

I’ve been thinking of trying to learn programming again.  I’ve taken stabs at C and Cocoa before, but I never manage to make anything bigger than a calculator.  I was thinking I might learn mobileCocoa and make some iPhone homebrew.  I doubt I’d ever actually get off the ground.  As good as I am with computers, programming has always been too dense for me.  I just can’t get into it to the point that I get excited about learning it.  It seems like a chore from the get-go, which isn’t how learning something as a hobby should feel.  I like doing web coding, HTML, CSS, and the like, but there isn’t really an outlet for anything I would produce.  If I were to learn programming I could eventually make programs that I myself would find useful, but I have no use for web design work.  I’d love to have a degree or something in web development, but I don’t really see how I would use it to make money, which is the whole point of going through the tedium of getting a degree.  I wish I had more directly profitable talents.

I wish I could just throw this huge TV in the bin.  It’s so fucking huge it makes it impossible to reorganize my room.  I can’t really move anything without moving it, which is fucking impossible without some kind of bulldozer.  I’d like to have a much more minimal room that I have now, getting rid of that entertainment stand, the TV stand that behemoth is on, and that useless box of vinyl.  I’d really love to have just one long desk along this west wall, but that would require getting rid of nearly all of my furniture, which is a bit extreme.  Just some empty floor space would be nice.  I could finally get some bookshelves to put games and stuff on, so they’re not just jammed in every opening everywhere else in the room.

This invisibleshield I bought for my iPhone really isn’t that great.  It was an act of congress to get it on there, and now that it’s there the edges are already starting to collect dirt and hair, just from being in my pocket.  It also makes the screen look like it’s scratched straight up and down, which defeats the purpose.

I’m going to take a nap.

TIME OFF FUCK YEAH

Finally.  FINALLY, I have a few days off.  Today was a short four hour shift, which I don’t entirely understand the purpose of, but whatever.  I have the next two days off, which rocks hard.  Ben’s first day is tomorrow morning, which is cool.  I don’t work tomorrow, it’s actually the first sunday in about a month that I haven’t, but he’ll be alright with the Sunday morning people.  It’ll be just the merch team, which he’ll be working with anyway, and the two girls doing the ad-set in Media.  It’ll be a good chance for him to get to know the job without having to worry about customers, plus Sundays are pretty laid-back in the morning anyway.  It’s as good a first day as you could ask for.  If I remember right my first day was a Sunday morning.  I remember getting into the store and hearing music playing, and a bunch of people who didn’t look like they wanted to kill themselves, which was a stark contrast from Food Lion.  The morning chalk-talk might be kind of intimidation, where we talk about the previous day’s numbers, I remember getting kind of nervous that I didn’t know what any of it meant, but seeing as he’s going to be Merch, he won’t really have anything to do with it.  I really think he’ll be able to work it.  I wouldn’t mind working merch myself.  If for any reason I have to leave Media, Merch is where I’d go.

I bought a trackball to use with my Mac so I could leave my one working mouse attached to my gaming computer.  So far it’s working out pretty well.  It’ll cool that it doesn’t really take up desk space, and that it doesn’t matter if the cord gets hung on something, as it never moves.  I’m still getting used to it, but it’s pretty nice so far.

Working

I get paid in a couple days, which is good, because I have about $20 that I can spend, and zero gasoline in my car.  I’ll have to put like $15 in my car on the way to work and hope that I make it until I get my money on Friday.  I really just have to make it back and forth tomorrow, and after that I can fill up on the way to work on Friday, seeing as how I get direct deposit that morning.  It’s gonna be kind of tight.  I hear gas is getting hard to get in some places, though I haven’t seen any shortages around here.

I’m really terrible at managing short-term money.  I had $80 to last me a week and a half, and I was pretty sure I was gonna make it through with that, then I got a surprise $100 for my DS, and then I was in total comfort zone.  Now somehow I’ve managed to max my credit and spend almost all of my cash.  Shit man.  This check is just gonna be bills and putting some cash into my credit card.  If my math is right, I should be able to pay bills, insurance, and put $100 onto my credit card, with about $100 of pocket money left, along with the $100 of cleared credit space.

This upcoming check, by my rough math, will be the biggest one I’ve ever received.  I’ve got about 33 hours for both weeks, about $8 per hour.  Doing some more rough math I’ll get about $375 after tax and such.  That’s far from accurate, but it’s accurate enough.

Ben has his new employee training tomorrow.  I remember that mine was kind of awkward.  I didn’t expect the environment to be as laid back as it is.  Everyone just kind of gets along, there aren’t really any assholes that everyone hates, everyone, even managers, is on a first-name basis.  It’s a good place to work.  I don’t know if I want to spend all of my life working there, I sure hope not, but as a part-time job it’s not bad.  I think it’s about as good as a walk-in job can possibly get.  Plus there’s lots of possibility for promotion inside the company and store.  Levi was a warehouse guy, and now he does home theater installs.  Tim was a media coordinator, and now he’s a department senior at another store.

I’ve gotta sleep.  I work tomorrow afternoon till closing, and I want to be able to get up at a decent hour so I can do some laundry and take a shower with some time to spare before I have to head off.