November 2006

Sleeping In

rmiles7721November 27, 2006Parenting/Family, Technology

I managed to sleep through the kids getting ready for school today. I vaguely remember at least one of them waking me up, but went right back to sleep. Managed to nap until about 8:30 or so. Very nice.

Since Divx converter does not work in Windows Vista, I am experimenting with Xvid and AutoGK on my PC to see if I can compress a couple of shows that I want to keep. I also have several movies from Netflix that I want to rip and compress that we have not seen yet. Seems like an awful lot of work just to watch a couple of videos that I will end up deleting later anyway, but space is at a premium on my entertainment PC, and I will keep a couple of them for the kids to watch. over and over and over again. Then I will get sick of them and delete them.

I had thought about decorating the house for Christmas today, but I am going to skip that. Maybe next week when I actually have two days off. Today I am going to plan Ruth’s birthday party. Kind of late, but I haven’t had much time away from work due to the holiday. Just a few friends and some beer for the adults as it is my birthday as well. I am looking at the links that my wife sent me and still don’t have a clue what to do, but will find something cool. Maybe I will drive to the party store in Carrollton tomorrow afternoon for some more ideas. Cheap is always good.

I did order her a birthday gift, should be here Wednesday. Some game called Cranium Hullabaloo and an Aquadoodle drawing mat. Hopefully the wife hasn’t already gotten her anything, or else this will be a Christmas gift instead.

Speaking of Christmas, we are going to take the girls to see Santa on Sunday afternoon. One of the cooler things that we do as a company each year is something called Santa’s Sleigh. We will set up at one of the restaurants in the parking lot. Some years we have rented an RV, others we set up a tent and stuff. We have food and Hot Chocolate for everyone, and all of the kids get to sit in Santa’s lap and they each get a gift. All of the children of our employees that are under ten years old participate. It’s pretty fun, and for a lot of them, it’s the only trip to see Santa that they will get. I damn sure won’t take my kids to the mall to see Santa Claus. That’s one of my childhood memories that is really cool, but nowadays it is a great big goat fuck that I try to avoid like the plague.


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Last Day…

rmiles7721November 26, 2006Site News

…of work this week. Thank goodness. It’s my seventh day and I am worn out. I get one day off this week and then another six days before I get anymore. Shit.

Pain in the Ass Children

rmiles7721November 25, 2006Parenting/Family

Around eight months ago, my oldest child got a job. Originally it was to pay for auto insurance, as I think that he needs to pay his portion if he wants the responsibility of driving (that and it doubles my freaking rates to put him on the policy). Needless to say, I have yet to get any insurance money, and he has driven maybe once since he got his license in February.

He works for the same company that I do. Initially he asked if he could work for me, and I let him know that I could get him a job, but it would be working for someone else. I love my family, but the last thing I want is to have them working for me. I’ve been there. My wife worked for me off and on for several years, and I always expected more from her than my other employees, was harder on her, and then there were the employees. Half of them think that you are getting the gravy train because you are related to the boss, and the other half go to you with questions that they don’t want to ask the boss. I figured that I would save him from this. There’s always the fact that he is a smart-ass punk and I have enough of those working for me already.

He went to work at the new store that they opened up on me last year. He only works weekends, and breaks from school, so that works out well. For awhile he worked mornings which worked out well. I would just drop him off on my way to work. After awhile he was put on the 2pm to 9pm shift. Big pain in the ass. It meant that my wife got to start taking him to work because I had already been there for eight hours at that point. Still, not too bad. Just as soon as I left the Carrollton store and opened one here in Temple, they put him back on day shift, which means he has to be there prior to 7am. No fucking way that I am going to drive him to work on a regular basis, then turn around and drive back to my town. One of the reasons I wanted to open a store here so badly is so that I DON’T have to drive anymore. I fill the tank once every two weeks or so now. Nor is my wife going to drag the girls out of bed at 6am to drive him to work. So far, he has been able to catch a ride with one of the waitresses who actually lives here in town. That is, until now. She is off tomorrow. Apparently he has know that since about 1pm this afternoon. He waits until 7pm to come down and tell me that he doesn’t have a ride to work.

Of course my response was along the lines of “what the fuck do you want me to do about it?” Maybe not in those words, but pretty close. I asked him who he had called for a ride. Nobody. I told him I guessed he needed to call his bosses and see if they could find him a ride. He called, and they can’t come get him. I then explained that he needed to call them back and find out who was working and see if he could not get in touch with one of them. A couple of them could come by here and get him, and it really wouldn’t be out of the way. It ends up that I am going to take him one town over and his boss is going to pick him up. If it came down to it, I would probably spend the extra 45 minutes to drive him to work, but I can’t tell him that I will take him if he doesn’t find a ride, because then he won’t look for one. Just like the rest of my employees.

Fucking pain in the ass kids.


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Getting back to normal…

rmiles7721November 25, 2006Site News

…at least somewhat. It’s shortly after 3:30pm on a Saturday and I am home. W00t!!. I have a manager trainee for at least the next six weeks, so she is doing shift change tonight and I am going to sit on my ass and surf the web. I actually have a couple of videos to edit, but that’s not even close to work. I only wish that the Divx converter worked under Windows Vista.

Thanksgiving Dinner

rmiles7721November 23, 20063Parenting/Family, Technology

Originally I had not planned to join my family in Atlanta this year for Thanksgiving. I was able to change plans this afternoon and we drove to Roswell and had supper with my family. My Grandmother and Great Aunt were there, as well as my Mom and Dad, and a couple of Aunts. It was nice being able to see them, as I only seem to get to a couple of times a year.

Apparently my family is catching on to this internet thing and at least a couple of them have blogs now. I was not particularly forthcoming about the fact that I have a blog, although my folks now and everyone knows that I had had a web site for several years now. I figure being the only Libertarian in the bunch sort of makes me stand out and I am already pretty good at hurting peoples feelings without trying to hard (made another waitress cry today) so I don’t advertise anymore. I did add links to a couple of my relatives though over in my blogroll.

I had a pretty good time, and wish I could have stayed longer. Since I had to drive home and was already nodding off we decided to go ahead and make the drive home about 7:30 or so. This is the first Thanksgiving that I can remember that wasn’t all rush. Normally I rush out of work at 2pm or 2:30, change, drive to wherever we are eating, then have to rusg back to work and be there by 8pm. Big pain in the ass. Even though we didn’t stay particularly late, I didn’t feel the need to rush back. I did shift change at work last night, and will tommorow night, so my new boss didn’t want me going back in tonight. Works for me.

This will probably be my only entry tonight. With everyone having their Black Friday sales tommorow, I will be extremely busy, so I plan on being in the shop by 5:30, and have my entire first shift scheduled in at 6am. If I don’t get a chance to post again this weekend, I am off on Monday, so maybe I will get a chance then.

no dreams…

rmiles7721November 21, 2006Uncategorized

…that I can remember anyway. I’ve been told that everyone dreams except for maybe sociopaths. Either way is fine by me, at least I was able to sleep for seven hours uninterrupted. Hopefully today will be an easy day. I think that I have extra help scheduled this morning, so I may be able to get some extra stuff done that has been needing attention, then get the hell out by 2:15.

Monday blues

rmiles7721November 20, 2006Site News

Well damn. It’s Monday again. I have enjoyed my weekend off but I could have used an extra day. I need more sleep :>

I found out last week that I get more vacation starting in January, so now I get two weeks plus another ten day vacation each year. Very cool. Since the fiscal year starts in June that means that I will actually get two ten day vacations next year. I need to see when spring break is for my kids, as that will be when I take the first one.

Pixies

rmiles7721November 19, 20063Entertainment

Just can’t get enough of this album.

iTunes has apparently given us the ability to embed iMixes in web pages. Would be even better if I goreceived a cut from people purchasing stuff, like with the Amazon Associates program.


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Johnny Bravo kicks ass

rmiles7721November 19, 2006Entertainment

“How ’bout YOU heal ME with your love, pretty mama”

Gotta get your pick up lines somewhere, why not Cartoon Network?

Thanksgiving

rmiles7721November 18, 2006Site News

Here it is, my weekend off and I have been up for an how already. My parents are coming out this afternoon and we are going to have our Thanksgiving dinner today as I will probably not make it home on the real day. Chris has to work this morning, so I got up to make sure that he was awake. Damn, I think I will pull an Eric and go back to bed until the sun comes up.