July 1, 2007

It’s About Time…

The girls are about a half an hour away. I have the potatoes just about done which is the only thing that will take any length of time. I will start everything else in 20 minutes or so that way it will all be good and hot when they come home. It’s raining right now so there won’t be much unpacking of the car until later or maybe tomorrow morning. That’s OK, we desperately need the rain right now.

It’s ridiculous how bad my plants need to be watered. I’ve been setting my coolers out on the back porch when it does rain to catch it, pouring whatever is left of my water and coffee into the plants outside, and stuff like that. Hopefully we will have several good days of light rain in the near future to get the groundwater levels where they need to be. I suppose it needs more than a few days but that will at least get us started in the right direction anyway.

Blonde Joke

A blonde heard that milk baths would make her beautiful. She left a note for her milkman to leave 25 gallons of milk. When the milkman read the note, he felt there must be a mistake. He thought she probably meant 2.5 gallons. So he knocked on the door to clarify the point.

The blonde came to the door and the milkman said, “I found your note asking me to leave 25 gallons of milk. Did you mean 2.5 gallons?”

The blonde said, “I want 25 gallons. I’m going to fill my bathtub up with milk and take a milk bath so I can look young and beautiful again.”

The milkman asked, “Do you want it pasteurized?”

The blonde said, “No, just up to my tits. I can splash it on my eyes.”

Man Arrested For Preaching Free Speech

The dude may have a right to free speech according to the first amendment that he was reciting but I highly doubt the framers of the Constitution put anything in there about using a frigging bullhorn. It doesn’t say in the article but I am assuming that the NYPD arrested him for breaking a noise ordinance, which is something that they have been cracking down on recently.

Hit Him With A Brick

Sometimes I just want to bash this one manager’s head in with a heavy blunt object. When I am in a restaurant or when I was a manager if someone was late and had not called I immediately tried to get them covered. CYA. Our folks have to be clocked in and on the floor at ten minutes prior to shift change time, i.e. 1:50PM, 8:50PM, and 6:50AM. It’s very simple. If they aren’t there by quarter till I am on the phone with THEM and if they still aren’t there five minutes later I start looking for replacements. I spoke with this particular manager at 2:25 and his cook wasn’t there. I asked who he had called. Nobody. He said he didn’t have anyone to call. He has plenty of people to call, but rather than paying a few hours of overtime he will leave the restaurant understaffed. I told him he was going to have to work it if he couldn’t get someone in there and gave him a couple of phone numbers.

He keeps all these people around that don’t have phones or cars and just doesn’t want to replace them or doesn’t have whatever it takes to get things done THEN, when it’s needed, rather than his leisure. Thus the blunt object.

Getting Free Stuff…

MySavings.com is the sponsor of this post and they are a pretty decent site where you can actually get Free Samples and Savings of your favorite products and try new ones. The site is set up under different categories such as Free Services and Software, Free Samples, Coupons, Deals and they even have a blog.

They further have the free samples divided into different categories with a ton of merchants in each. It’s easy to sign up. I figured I would check out a couple, so signed up for a free sample of St Joseph’s Aspirin, something that you always need around the house anyway. You can opt to NOT receive emails from merchants, which I did and then fill out a short survey and go through some of the free offers that you always get put through. Some of them are actually interesting on occasion so I don’t mind too terribly. There are several pages of free offer but overall it’s not too intrusive particularly considering that you are getting something free. MySavings.com recently sent out this press release:

NEW SITE MAKES IT EASY TO TRY BEFORE YOU BUY.

By Offering Hundreds of Links to Real Brand Name Free Samples

In today’s economy, people loving getting something for nothing. In just under a year, hundreds of thousands of users have discovered http://www.MySavings.com, and why it’s the place to go if they’re looking for something free. The pull? http://www.MySavings.com offers thousands of completely free samples and printable coupons, the site is updated daily with the newest offers, and users have access to an online community with the ability to post comments and rate samples.

What helps MySavings.com stand out from other free sample sites is the thoroughness of their information. They arguably have the largest directory of free samples online, and each offer is complete with a detailed description of what you get as well as an image of the product and a direct link to the sign up form.

In a market that is saturated by web sites claiming to give away free stuff and then requiring you to sign up for paid offers to earn the product, MySavings stands out by offering only legitimate and brand name free samples.

According to the President of MySavings.com Brandt Held “Companies distribute samples to consumers in the hope that if they like the sample, they will buy their product. We make it easy for consumers to try before they buy, by linking them to hundreds of real brand name free samples.”

One of the site’s goals is to create an online community for their users. Members religiously rate and comment on each offer as soon as it comes in the mail, allowing others valuable insights as to which ones and which ones aren’t. The Forum is one of the most popular features on http://www.MySavings.com, with thousands of registered users who aren’t afraid to say they’re addicted to the site, and addicted to free samples as well.

The site also rewards its members for posting. Users who post new topics and free samples are awarded with Amazon gift cards when they reach certain benchmarks. Add to that an entertaining blog that’s updated 3 times per week and you’ve got a site where users can happily get lost in for hours. And plenty do.

MySavings.com was founded in 2006 as a savings community to link users to real brand free samples, coupons, and money saving offers.

If you like getting free stuff, stop by and give them a shout.

Time to Go…

As much as I hate it, it’s time to get off my ass and get ready for work. I can always tell when I have hit my 5th or 6th day of work. I just have a really hard time getting myself moving at all…

The girls should be home thins afternoon. It will be nice to have them back home. I missed them all. The house has been pretty quiet and boring for the last few days with them out of town.

Sleep

As the tagline for my blog used to say “sleep is just a cheap caffeine substitute”. I actually did get a bit of sleep last night. About normal for me anyway. I finally hit the sack about 10:30 and have been up for almost 30 minutes now. Working on my second cup of coffee. The nice thing is that with all of the managers in I won’t drag in until about a quarter till seven today. I have a few things I need to do and I will end up cooking at that same store for awhile this morning. That is my most challenging one as well. It’s the one where they had that guy arrested for having hidden cameras, so right off the bat I have a public perception problem that is still there several months after the fact. It’s in a pretty upscale neighborhood which makes it a little harder to get my business back as well.

Couple that with the fact that half that guy’s employees were either using or selling drugs on the premises and I pretty much have an uphill battle there. My sales are down something like 28% over this time last year.

The guy that IS there managing now is a pretty good manager. I trained him a couple of years ago and he has plenty of experience. His only problem is that he is scared of losing people. He will keep shit around that doesn’t help his business even when there are replacements available. That’s OK. I will be helping him with his schedule today and some of that shit is going to find itself with about two days on the schedule. Hopefully they will just quit.

I have been reluctant to run anyone off from that store because it is harder to staff it than the other two and also because with my vacation next week I just didn’t want to jeopardize any chances of being off for a week. As a manager your time off is pretty much guaranteed but once you go a bit higher if your stores aren’t staffed you are pretty much shit out of luck. That’s why my days off have pretty much been cut in half over the last two months. I am averaging 5 days off per month over the first two months since I got promoted and don’t see it getting easier until the summer is over. I have one other guy that hasn’t had a vacation yet that will be taking it at the end of July and then I have a couple months of breathing room after that.

I want a memory upgrade…

One thing I may do that will help out the lagginess on my PC is to upgrade the RDRAM. Part of the problem is that I always have a bunch of windows open when I am working on something, such as the webcast yesterday, and I like to multi-task. I have about a gig of memory but I am considering tripling it. My sponsors at CheapestRDRAM.com have some pretty good deals on memory at their site.

I can get another GB of RDRAM from them for about $250. It’s two sticks of PC800-45. If you’ve never changed or added memory to a motherboard it’s actually pretty easy. Not quite plug and play but just about. The biggest pain for most people, depending on the computer they have is to be able to find where it goes. It’s fairly easy for me as I like to keep the inside of my case clutter free and tie off all of the cables and wiring so that air can flow through the case.

They also have a list of compatible computers and motherboards on the site so that you know if it’s the right memory for you. They also have directions (with pictures!) on how to install RDRAM.