Stephen's Journal

10:21pm: $9.25 later
Yesterday was a blast. It started out with me meeting Joe at our Cecil Whittakers. We got the usual deal (2 topping pizza, salad and bosco sticks). The pizza seemed a bit off, almost like they used too much sauce. It was still great though. They had a bowling game and a shooting game, neither of which kept our attention. I suggested we go to South County mall, where they have the original TMNT arcade game in the slackers there. We stopped on the way for some quarters, then the gaming began. First off, it ate our quarters for Leonardo and Donotello. So we had to play as Michaelangelo and Raphael. We did get those quarters back, and it was a good thing we did. Our video game skills have plummeted. We did beat the game with $.75 to spare. After the 3rd boss things kind of hazy for me. Bits and pieces looked familiar. Joe was recognizing things all the way up until the last level. We fought Bebop, Rocksteady and Baxter. Then we ran across these strange construct/robots which royally kicked our ass. Joe didn't recognize them from the TMNT cartoons, comics or movies. Krang was equally touch, and I never thought we would beat Shredder. He split into 3 versions of himself. When we would take out one of the Shredders, it would always come back. I kept thinking there had to be a pattern or something. I kept trying to discern which one was on screen the longest, or any clues on which one was the "real" Shredder. Joe wondered if the programming could be that complex for such an old game. It was about that time that Shredder kicked the bucket and we won.

After that I bid farewell to Joe and headed to my dad's. We hung out for a bit and watched Jeopardy. My sister came down around 4:00. We headed out to Our Lady of the Shrines for dinner. The food was great. We figured that I was the only one who had not eaten there before. Dad and I had the chicken henri, my sister had a big salad. I was disappointed that they didn't have a group singing. They had a group setting up for a puppet show, but we didn't stay for that. After that we went through the lights. I still think it would be neat to do the horse drawn carraige through the lights, but it would be cold as hell lately. After coming home, I helped my dad bring the tree up from the basement, then I headed out. Stopped by Sarah's and found she was sick, so no gaming last night. I came back home, dropped by work to sign up for my OT and talked with Chris and Clarence. Ended up going over to Clarence's house last night and sat in for a while on their Superheros game.

Today has been slow and uneventful. Made tacos for dinner, working on a centaur ranger character. Bed

2:32pm: Last man standing above the red light district
I should have posted this morning so I could have used both subject lines instead of combining them into 1.


I live above the red light district. One of the downstairs neighbors has their door outlined in red lights. It gave me a chuckle thinking about that, then an "eww" moment as I thought about the reality of that.

I am the last man standing. The last couple of days there has been a firing blitz. I don't know what the hell is going on, but Wed & Thur together was around 30 agents. Today I went in for some overtime (hmm, I wonder why they are so hard up for people to work???) and found out from Richard that one of them was Brenda. 16 months after we all started, I am the only one left from my training class. It doesn't surprise me. I always figured I would either last the longest, or be close to the longest. Still it's a little disheartening. Everyone I knew that worked there prior to me working there is now gone. Tina was fired a couple of weeks ago according to Sarah. It's so strange how people come and go in your life.

I have more to post about, but my stomach is overruling me. I'll make a post later about my time with Joe and my family yesterday.

9:52pm: Dodging a bullet
I went back to work today. Apparently it has been busy all week. We found out today that our site has been selected to be open on Christmas Day and New Years Day. Thankfully both of those are on Fridays, so I'm off anyways!

So this Our Lady of the Snows trip took a humorous turn. My dad didn't mention we were going to my sister. My sister asked him about it, and he told my sister it was up to me if she could come. She calls me up, I tell her of course she can come. I called my dad and we had the following conversation:

Me: Can Kristina come?
Dad: Sure I guess she can.
Me: Why didn't you tell her that, instead of having her call me?
Dad: Goes into explanation of how this was my idea etc and he didn't want to drag anyone else in.
Me: Ok, I understand. When she called me, I told her she couldn't come.
Dad: You did what?

I should have kept him on the hook longer. The whole change in his tone was priceless. It should be a good time Friday night.

10:39am: New month of new posts
Looking back, I had 19 posts in November. That is pretty darn good. Makes up for 2006 where I only had 1 November post and 2007 when I had 4. I start the new month sick. I've been kinda sick since Friday. It mostly throat and drainage. It's not getting worse, nor is it getting better. Yesterday I had plans of just working half a day, and did. Today I called out all together. Hopefully this thing subsides and soon.

So I've been working on a preliminary list for the Top 10 Events of 2009. It's the only day of the year that I've posted on each of the last 7 years. This year kind of stinks since I have to work Christmas Eve and New Years Eve. At least I'm off on Christmas and New Years Day.

This Friday I'm headed up to STL. Hopefully I will get a chance to see steelmug. In the evening my dad and I (maybe sister, dunno yet) will be headed over to Our Lady of the Snows. I think we'll do dinner over there, then look at the lights. I put my little Christmas tree up yesterday. I have a strand of lights on it, but for some reason there was another strand in the box. There is no way you can get 2 strands on that tree! There is also ornaments and tinsel, which I haven't put on yet. Part of me thinks I'm going to get hit hard with the absence of Sarah around the holiday. Then I think back to last year, and we didn't put the tree up.

Sometime this month I'm hoping to get a chance to go see "A Christmas Story" playing at the Rep theater. I would love to see how that gets translated onto stage. Maybe I'll shoot for the 11th or 12 for that.

One last thing, does anyone have plans for New Years Eve? I couldn't get up to STL until at least 8 that night, but as of now I have no plans. Just a thought, we have a whole month to figure out what is going on.

5:04pm: Memory Monday # 24
I just noticed that my last Memory Monday (#23) was on the 23rd of the month. Good planning huh?

So black Friday is past, Cyber Monday (if you believe the hype) is today. That can only mean 1 thing: Christmas is approaching. Growing up we had a way to countdown to Christmas. Hung on my door and my sister's door was a long fabric contraption with many ties. You would tie a small piece of chocolate (usually a Santa shaped piece). Each night before bed you would eat one piece of candy, showing you got closer to Christmas. I can't find a picture anywhere of it, but the picture below will give you an idea.



It didn't have any numbers on it, and had more than 12 spots. I think it had closer to 25. It was always a nice way to end a day by eating a small piece of candy and knowing that Christmas was one day closer

9:30am: Page-a-day fact
I certainly hope this is true.

"BATHROOMS IN BRITISH RAMADA INNS ARE STOCKED WITH COMPLIMENTARY RUBBER DUCKIES."

8:38pm: The pencil says no
Today was slow at work. We had a very staffed help desk thanks to our four new agents. They seem to be doing great. One of the team leads, Angee B, had her prediction pencil out. According to her, for the last 8 years it has predicted how many kids and what gender they will be with 100% accuracy. She hovers it over your wrist and the movement "clues her in" to this information. She tried it on several people that already had kids and it worked. I'm pretty certain she did not know this information ahead of time. So later on, she did the pencil thing with me, and according to the pencil I will have no kids. Take that for what it's worth. Angee then asked me if I can have kids. That question caught me off guard. As I told her, as far as I know I can have kids. I don't think I'll run out and get my boys tested, although it would be funny (and highly irresponsible) to have a kid just to spite the pencil.

Tonight I went out and bought bottled water. I never thought I would be the type to do that. Actually I wanted it more for the crystal light singles I bought. 10 calories a pack is a whole lot better than most other things out there. The last couple days I've not been feeling well, it’s been generic cold symptoms. The part that bothers me is that it has been steady. I wish it would get really bad then heal, or just go away. So that last couple days I haven't been eating a whole lot, but I've been keeping track of what I've been eating. Don't know if this will lead anywhere, but it's kept me entertained.

Computer is defragmenting right now. After the analysis, it told me it didn't need to be defragmented. I went ahead and did it anyway. It's been running for half an hour and is only 14% complete. Sounds like some fragmentation there. Not much else to report, I have my Memory Monday lined up for tomorrow. Just hope I remember to post tomorrow:)

11:16am: Last Turkey Day of the Decade
I was asking a few people about this, do you realize that the end of the decade is almost upon us? The decade which began with the Y2K scare is almost over. Very freaky if you ask me.

On to Thanksgiving. It was small this year. I would venture to say we had about 15 people total. Dad brought a gooey butter cake which was great as usual. I noticed I posted a few years ago how I wasn't a fan of the homemade stuffing. I don't know what I was thinking then. The stuffing was great, and the rolls as usual were to die for. The Cowboys won this year, which made Richard happy. We played pictionary. I seemed to get some hard things to draw, the hardest of which was the action slow motion. Too bad you couldn't mime. I got down there around noon, and dad and I headed out about 6. I stayed the night at his place, and then got up early Saturday to go shopping. NOT!

You couldn't get me anywhere near a mall yesterday. I did go to the bank, met my sister and Brian for lunch at Wendy's, played some video games with my sister, then did dinner with Sarah. Was going to stay for the D&D game, but I wasn't feeling great. In fact, I'm still not 100%. I headed back, took a nap, and was going to play the game via Skype, but nothing ever happened. People showed up late, they had technical difficulties, so I called it a night.

I was thinking about going in for some OT today, but then realized the way the pay structure works, it wouldn't be overtime since Thursday gets grouped as holiday pay, not part of my normal 40 hours. I still may go in a bit if I feel up to it. I'm sure I'll have to take some regular calls again tomorrow (Sundays suck!).

That's all for now, I need post these last couple days of November. Seems that all my November posts end around the 28th. I want to make sure I have something to read this time next year, when we are in a new decade!

9:19am: Year later update
Just read last year's post from this day. It was a bunch of random things going on. Strange how much a year has changed some things, and some things have stayed the same. If you want help interpreting this post, read last year's post here

1) There are 3 people on my original team from when I started. The rest have been fired.2
2) Not been putting in as much OT as I did when I started. Evelyn and Zach no longer work at the company either.
3) I can't believe that happened a year ago, seems like just a couple months.
4) Aunt Evelyn is still in the same state from what I know. I don't think she will ever get better.
5) Downstairs neighbor has had several more signs on the door saying she can't get out of bed due to sickness and isn't available for company. I haven't seen her husband in ages. I had hear from someone else that he wasn't doing well.
6) Neighbors still rock.
7) Yahoo answers was a fad. I haven't logged on to answer questions in a long time.
8) I will be headed out highway 8 again this year for Thanksgiving. The big question is will I be headed back to Farmington afterwards, or going to STL?
9) I still check failblog most days. I have the feed on LJ friends page, so its easier to look at people failing.
10) Last year I said it was just wrong to end a list with 9 items instead of 10. I still believe in that theory and have put # 10 on this list to make sure that point rings home.

10:57pm: Memory Monday # 23
The Thanksgiving tradition for most of my life has been going to a relative's house. Most of the time it is my mom's cousin Dorothy's house south of Jeff City. One year I remember Chris and Mary had Thanksgiving (right after they moved into their new house). I can't tell you exactly when we started going out there. If I had to guess, I would say somewhere in my early teens. Prior to that we used to have Thanksgiving at our house. I have several fond memories (which probably span several years worth of Thanksgivings) of Thanksgiving at our house. I remember getting up and watching the Macy's parade. Mom would start the turkey mid-morning and would work the rest of the time getting everything ready. Dad would go and pick up grandma (his mom) and Cecilia, who was somehow distantly related. I can even remember one year it snowed while we were in the dining room eating dinner. It was one of the few times we ate in the dining room (as opposed to the kitchen), and used the nicer table settings. Those were back in the days where everything was nice and simple.

9:15pm: Gearing up for turkey (and another food story)
Just cooking some stuffing for tomorrow's help desk Thanksgiving celebration. Tomorrow our 4 new HD people also start, so that is exciting. I got stuck taking calls for part of the day (3.5 hours to be exact) again today. I don't understand the logic. Yes I know our staffing level is low compared to what you expect for call volume. But when we have 2 minutes between calls, I would say your predictions are a little off and need to be revised. During the time I got my D&D books out of the car and worked on my Lumi a little more. I also tweaked Sarah's Japanese flash card program so now you have the choice of whether it shows the Japanese or English words first.

I had an interesting surprise yesterday. I had made tacos. I do this a lot, no surprise there. Instead of the usual 4 cheese blend I usually pick up, I picked up a Mexican Taco Cheese that Kraft makes. Turns out it has taco seasoning in it. I would have known this if I had read the packaging. On tacos, you can't really tell because of the seasoned meat and salsa. Usually I will use the cheese for other things (breakfast burritos, salads etc). I don't think the taco seasoning is going to go well with either of those. I like my old cheese better, it's more versatile.

I think the best part of making stuffing is the quality sampling after each load made. Hmm, and my computer seems stuck on 90s 1 hit wonders. "Lovefool" by the Cardigans, "She's so high" by Tal Bachman, "Hey Leonardo" by Blessed Union of Souls, and "Closer to free" by the Bodeans. I know the Point had a way back weekend, I didn't realize they told iTunes about it.

11:12am: Safe for 8
I got my car back this morning. They had to replace the halfshaft , which is hooked to the axle. They also realigned the front end. I may be headed to work later today to see if any overtime is available. This upcoming week is a 4 day week for me since I'm off for Thanksgiving. Why is it that Holidays always fall on days that I already work? I have a 4 day week and 3 day weekend and I'm getting paid for 5 days. What is the problem with that you ask? If Thanksgiving fell on a day I already had off, I'd have a 5 day week but get paid for 6 days. Maybe this is a grass is greener thing. I'll let you know after Christmas, which is on a day I have scheduled off.

I'm glad the car is taken of. If it hadn't been, I wouldn't be going to Thanksgiving with the family. I take highway 8 to St. James and head north from there. Highway 8 is beautiful, but in that 70 mile stretch there are only 2 towns. If anything would have happened to me, at least I would have had nice scenery to walk in.

Something else that crossed my mind recently. I've known this for several, but I don't think I've posted about it. In James Blunt's "You're Beautiful" the line "She could see from face that I was flying high" is a radio edit. The original has fucking instead of flying. Just thought I'd pass that along in case anyone was interested.

Gaming last night was cut a little short. Rodger cut out early since he is working days. Clarance gave me a lift home. He also approved my Lumi character for his game. I may work on that if I have some time today. That is all for now, have a great day everyone.

2:37pm: Time flip flop
Time is acting all weird for me. During the week, time crawls by. Seriously, I can't believe how slow work goes. It's not like we're slow (well the agents were yesterday). They've introduced a new program called Knowlagent. Basically it's short 15 training courses you do at your desk. They have some that are scheduled, or they can pull people off the phone in slow periods to work on the lessons. They have had some hiccups with it. The biggest one has been the pop-up blocker. Work has one installed on all the computers, but this program uses a pop up to tell you when it's time for a learning session. I'm sure it will all get worked out.

Speaking of computer stuff, I just finished creating a short easy program for Sarah. It is a flashcard program so she can learn some Japanese. She inputs the Japanese and English words in a text file, and the program generates the Japanese words randomly. You click and the English equivalent. Future upgrades will include an option to get the English words and click to get the Japanese equivalent, a multiple choice "test" part, and maybe a section where it will show the symbols for the words. It's fun, it's educational and it keeps me busy.

Today has flown by. Right now my car is in the shop getting repairs. I'll have to get the exact name of the piece, but it has something do with the axle that needs replacing. I dropped it off, walked home (with a stop for lunch at the Pizza Hut buffet). Hopefully should have it here in a few hours. Tonight is the Zombie game at Chris's place. I'm going to be dropping out of that game soon. I'll be running a D&D game down here, and playing in Sarah's game in STL, so something has to go. Clarence is also running a D&D game on Sunday nights. I'm hoping he'll let me play a Lumi cleric/Church Inquisitor. That would be bad-ass. Before I know it, it will be Sunday again and time will start crawling. At least it's only a 4 day week for me.

9:07pm: Memory Monday # 22
I realized I had forgotten to post yesterday right as I went to bed. At that point I didn't know what I wanted to post about, but today I saw something that evoked some memories. Someone at work had a Harriet Carter catalog. As a kid, we received their catalog probably about 4 times a year. I always enjoyed looking through them just because you had no idea what would be in there. They sell a lot of those "As seen on TV" products. Checking out their website, the front page has the Snuggie, a windshield wonder (looks like something you'd clean your windshield with, I wonder what makes it so special?), a slide/negative converter (save them to a computer) and a bank that it a butt with the coin slot right where you'd expect it to be. As far as I know we never ordered anything from the catalog. I'm not even sure how we started receiving them. My mom was a QVC shopper. As I recall they had some "racier" items in there. Nothing truly obscene, but things like the butt bank that would amuse a male adolescent. This catalog I saw today (didn't have a chance to thumb through it) was regular magazine size. The catalog we received were smaller, similar to a paperback novel size. Good to see they're still in business. After all, they've been offing distinctive gifts since 1958!

7:27pm: The Hermit Crab of Win
Taken from a post in Customer's suck. This was too amusing not post for my enjoyment years in the future.

I'm feeding some krill to the hermit crab at the touch tide pools. He's got his own little tank, which he shares with some California mussels.

Hermit crab: Om nom nom.
Patron: Oh, what is that you're feeding them?
Me: It's just some krill.
Patron: I didn't know mussels ate krill.
Me: Oh, no, it's not for the mussels, it's for the hermit crab.
Hermit crab: Where ever did you get these? They're most delicious.
Patron: So how do the mussels eat the krill?
Me: They...don't. They're filter feeders.
Patron: What do you mean?
Me: They filter tiny particles of food out of the water using their specialized gills.
Patron: But then how do they chew up the krill?
Me: ...they...don't. They don't eat krill whole. The hermit crab does.
Hermit crab: You must give me the recipe for these!
Patron: So what do mussels eat?
Me: They're filter feeders. They filter water using their gills and collect food particles for consumption.
Patron: Does that include krill?
Me: Not...whole krill. Maybe very tiny bits of krill.
Patron: Then why did you throw whole krill in there?
Me: (?!?!?!?) For the hermit crab!
Patron: What hermit crab?
Me: (points to the hermit crab, who is plain sight) See, he's right there! He eats the whole krill. He's eating some right now!
Hermit crab: Seriously, it's like a party in my mouth and only the cool invertebrates are invited!
Patron: So what do the mussels eat?
Me: They filter the water and collect tiny particles of food.
Patron: Oh, I see.
Me: So you get it now?
Patron: I think so.
Me: Great! (turns to leave)
Patron: So, wait a minute, the krill is for the mussels, right?
Me: (headtank)
Hermit crab: I bet these would be lovely in an arugala salad...

12:02pm: Gaming from afar
Yesterday the plan was to go up to STL, hang out with Sarah, eat some yummy Mexican food at El Burrito Loco and play her D&D game late at night. Most of that happened, with the exception of me staying up there for the game. After dinner, we were driving around the south side when my car started to make a funny noise when I accelerated. The motion was kind of bumpy as well. It was only when I accelerated from a dead stop, and even then it didn't happen all the time. We came back to Sarah's, and I decided to head back to Farmington. Oddly enough, I didn't see any signs of trouble on the way home. I'm going to see if it can be looked at today.

So I gamed via skype with the group last night. Ben, who is from California and usually games with us via skype, was also playing, so we had two computers setup with skype. Skype won't allow you to do a video conference call with 3 people. We tried and got the audio, but the program doesn't support 3 way video. Not a bad session, but we got sidetracked a bit with missing body parts. It was a nice feeling to finish gaming at 4:30 and just roll over in bed and fall asleep. I may have to do this more often.

9:35pm: Getting someone fired
I believe that I effect most of the lives of the people I know in a positive way. Tonight I effected someone's life in a negative way. I know the person in question dug himself in the hole. I just happened to be nearby and threw the dirt in the hole with him in it.

I was helping an agent when Joe P (a team lead) came and talked to Joe (the agent). He was in wrap for 12 min. Wrap is a state that you use to finish notes etc. You should have about 20 seconds of wrap per call, but only if you need it. Agent Joe gave Joe P some lip about it, saying he finishing something or another. After I finished helping the agent, I told Joe P that agent Joe was doing no such thing. In fact, I told Joe P that agent Joe has done this type of thing before, and I told him about a few other tricks agent Joe developed for avoiding taking calls. Joe P wanted me to tell Erica (Joe P's boss) about this. I did and she wanted an eye kept on him. So next time I'm down that row, he is pulling one of his other tricks. I tell Erica, who has Joe P monitor agent Joe. Sure enough, agent Joe is up to all his tricks and Joe P is writing down times and gathering facts for Erica. Erica comes over, grabs agent Joe's file and goes to talk to the people services (AKA HR) director. Meanwhile agent Joe is talking to people around him, and laughing it up. I knew it was coming as soon as I saw Erica with the file. Agent Joe was oblivious.

I didn't get to see the takedown, but later on I walked through the row and agent Joe wasn't there. I found Joe P later, and the look in his eyes and the nod he gave said it all. I just pictured agent Joe going back to his family and telling them he was fired. I don't he knew I had anything to do with it. I had previously mentioned to agent's Joe's last team lead that he was doing this. Joe P told me he had a note to file over it prior. Now agent Joe will be looking for a new job.

7:29pm: Another reason not to join facebook
They apparently use snails to deliver email. I got an invite from sungazing to be their friend on Facebook. It was delivered today, Nov 10th, 2009. The invite date on the body of the email says the invite date was Sept 13, 2008. It took over a year to get to me. I think it should have been covered in virtual stamps and postmarks.

I cannot get the song Sheep go to Heaven by Cake out of me head. It popped in there during a meeting we had today at work our Marc, our General Manager. Agents will be seated on the call floor based on their issue resolve score. So we're back to segregation! I just watched the video, and it's about a social outsider who goes crazy and kills a bunch of people. Hmm, I could see something like that actually happening at work.

10:27pm: Memory Monday # 21
So I won the Stanley Cup in hockey tonight on my video game. So I figured my post this week should be video game related. I go back to my grade school days for this one. I never had a Nintendo growing up, but many kids in the neighborhood did, so I didn't mind. I did have an Atari and still have many games for it. One of my favorite games was Solaris. It was a space related game. At the time I had no idea what the point of it was, nor how to beat it. The game was huge. Reading about it now, there were 16 quadrants with 16 sectors each. There was a lot battles in the game. My one memory revolves around Mike and Kevin, brothers who lived several houses down. We played the game many times and each had a specialty. Kevin was good at fighting the flying saucer type ships, Mike was good at playing the "hell zones" where all the controls were scrambled. I was good at fighting the cobra ships, which moved fast and would kill you in 1 shot. I was also the one who played it the most, and could direct the others were to go. We never did beat the game, but had a hell of a time playing the game. I've played a lot of video games in my life, few stand out like Solaris.

9:16am: Weekend full of games
I spend most of my weekend playing video games. I finished my season in the hockey game (I went 81-1). I've played through 2 rounds of playoffs and am currently at the conference final. I'm disappointed that there is nothing special for the playoffs. The commentary is the same, and the rinks aren't decked out any differently. Oh well, I'll probably finish in the next day or two. I've been playing the original Halo. I've just met the flood, and forgot how badly I hate those fuckers. So far they don't have weapons, but it will only be a matter of time before I get fragged with a rocket from one of them. After I finish the hockey, I will start on either Myst: Exile, or Lego Star Wars.

Yesterday I went up to STL to play video games with my sister. She got the new Virtua Tennis for PS3. Overall not too bad. I think I had the most fun with the mini-games. You can feed animals, dodge large tennis balls, play curling, hit a lego wall and much more. We did play a tournament and at the end of the 3 rounds you face 2 mystery opponents. Turns out they are Boris Becker and Stephan Edburg. Despite being old, they handed our asses to us. Speaking of old, my sister created her own player for the world tour. It's an old (born in 1900), black guy (the template started off black, we whitened him up in the end) who is creepy looking beyond compare. There is so much you can customize for your player. We probably spent 10 min on that alone. After that we played a baseball game she bought. It was a lot of fun, but there are a lot of quirks you have to work out in that game. She killed me by at least 20 runs in the first game and she won the second game fairly easily too. In the third game I started off strong, and held on despite a major comeback in the last inning by her. We had a blast, we will have to do it again.

Other things that popped into my mind:

* My sister has a new dog named Annabell. Small beagle type dog.
* Gus's pretzels was busy as hell at 2:00 on a Sat afternoon.
* El Burrito Loco still rocks for Mexican food
* I'm hoping I have some training on my sched for work. Was supposed to have an hour and a half training on Thur, but it got canceled. Had a half hour training instead.
* I woke up with a headache today, and it not gone away yet.

10:42pm: Few updates
The concert (for lack of a better word) was awesome. Perhaps my favorite part was the first five minutes where all the jokes were St. Louis specific. He talked about the Rams and the possibility of moving. He said that we should place a goal line around the city, because the Rams won't cross it. He went on to talk politics, drugs and sex to name a few topics. The concert was being signed for the deaf people. He asked the signer what the sign was for fuck and pussy. The hour and a half went by way too quickly. Sarah got a tour t-shirt. We sat in traffic for a long time leaving.

In other news, we had free pizza at work all day thanks to our new general manager Marc. Help desk also had to take calls for about 2 hours today due to short staffing. I also submitted a picture to fail blog. The link the the pics is here . Hopefully it will make it the homepage.

9:10pm: Memory Monday #20
I'm keeping this one short. I'm listening to game 5 of the world series, the yankees are ahead in the series 3-1, but losing the game 6-2. I'm about ready to crash, and it's only 9:13. It reminds me of a time when I was fairly young and would listen to the Cardinal's games on the radio via headphones. My mom would usually come in once I fell asleep and remove the headphones and turn off the radio. Looking back, I'm not sure how long I lasted, but I bet I didn't make it half an hour.

Right now, I'm coming down with something and feel like crap. The medicine is knocking me out. I'll try to get to the concert tomorrow. It was great.

3:25pm: Red assing it!
So last night was Halloween party at Chris and Mary's. Turns out it was Chris, Mary, Clarence, Becky, and Joe. Rodger, Janice and Dani H. showed up for a little while. Towards the end a couple of Chris's friends that he plays Warhammer with came down with their son.

I brought over the bottle of Red Ass Rhubarb wine that I got in South Dakota in 2005. It tasted wonderful! Chris, Mary and Becky sampled some and like it as well. Chris had some blackberry wine. I had a cup, but wasn't too enthused about it. Becky had her mead, but I didn't have any of it. I got there about 645 and by 1045 I was ready to go. I spent the extra hour from turning our clocks back sleeping. I woke up today well rested, around 2 or so I really started to drag. I was starting to get a headache around that time too. I'm home now after my half day at work. I'm meeting Sarah at 6, going to Buffalo Wild Wings for dinner and then to see Robin Williams at 8 at the Fox. Should be a great show. I'll post about it tomorrow.

5:36pm: Adventures with the big pizza
Last night we had Sarah's D&D game. I wanted a Pointer's pizza. It's been since college since I've had one. We were supposed to have 6 people total, but it ended up as 5. I ended up getting a Pointersaurus pizza. 28 inches of pizza goodness. To transport it, Sarah had to lean back in her seat, and put her knees on the underside to support it. The pizza went over very well. The game was eh, in my opinion. We ended up being sent to hell (Halloween themed). We didn't get a whole lot accomplished, but apparently that was supposed to be the point. I get to take my psion to level 2 for next session.

I came home and crashed around 6 and didn't get up til almost 1. Not much happened this afternoon. I'm headed over to Chris and Mary's for a Halloween get together tonight. Tomorrow I work half a day then back to STL for the Robin Williams show. I'm quite excited about that.

My game, Ted's Quest, is still coming along well. The pictures Sarah is drawing are amazing. Her internet is down right now, otherwise I'd have some more to work with. I've been taking my laptop to work with me and working on the game during my hour lunch break. I don't have anything else to do, so I figure why not.

10:25pm: Adjusting
So I'm on my new schedule this week. Sun-Thur 10a-7p. I think the biggest adjustment for me is the hour long lunch. Frankly, I'm bored. I may start coming back to the apartment since I live so close by. Today I did some crossword puzzles to kill the time. I've talked to my team lead and she is looking into cutting it down to half an hour lunch and seeing if I can get off half an hour early. Corporate was in the last 2 days. Kevin Foley, the CEO of the company was listening in to some calls with agents. If that isn't pressure, I don't know what is. Last week we had one of the team leads walk out and left an interesting instant message to all the agents voicing his displeasure. They shut down the messaging system and purged everything out of the system.

In non-work related news, I'm still hanging out down here. Been working through my hockey game and scattered some Halo in there as well. I've gotten Sarah to start up production on some scenery for my on-going Myst like game tentatively called Ted's Quest. If I recall correctly, it was name after Ted because he asked if it could be named after him. Sarah's pictures look 100x better than mine, although I must say I was proud of what I was capable of doing in MS paint. The game is still being programmed in VB.

I've also signed up for a game called Hundred Years War. It recreates the situation in England and France during the HYW. You are a historical person in the game and have control over fiefs. You manage your fief, make money, raise armies, support your king etc. It's turn based with updates 4 times a week. I'm waiting for a new game to start, which should be soon.

Friday night is gaming up in STL. Sat night is a Halloween party at Chris's house. Sunday I'm working half a day and then up to St. Louis for the Robin Williams show that was postponed from March. I'll be traveling a lot this weekend.

I keep feeling like there is something else I should be posting about, but nothing comes to mind. If I remember, I'll post again.