April 2007

Tragedy Strikes VA Tech

rmiles7721April 16, 20072Site News

32 people are dead at Virginia Tech today after a gunman rampaged through the school killing people. So far it has not yet been announced whether police killed the gunman or if he shot himself. I suppose it doesn’t really matter. He’s dead and the shooting has stopped.

I have been busy most of the afternoon and therefore didn’t see the alert when it popped into my email earlier. 32 people. That makes it the deadliest school shooting in US history followed by UT (Charles Whitman) and Columbine.

The wife brought up a pretty good point when I asked her this afternoon if she had heard the reports, that all of the media attention that this is getting is just going to make it that much more likely to happen again. I agree with her on this one.

If only someone there had a weapon when it was occurring maybe they could have stopped this tragedy. Around the web I’ve seen several posts about it.

Clint Says Schools Don’t give a crap. Clint doesn’t know what the hell he’s talking about.

I’m still not sure who this person is (did I tell you I hate Livejournal?) but they are trying to compare the reaction of the white house press corp with a made up TV President. What the fuck is up with that? Join the real world you moron.

Jacques Strappe has to do the obligatory comparison with the war in Iraq and let us know what a tyrannical idiot he thinks the President is. That may very well be the case but what does it have to do with the subject at hand?

What is up with all of these crappy Livejournal sites on Technorati anyway? Doesn’t anyone besides me have a shitty blog on their own domain?


Technorati :

Thank God It’s Friday (Even though it’s not)

rmiles7721April 15, 20079Blogging

This is my Friday, thank goodness. I’ve worked about 60 hours over the last five days once you figure in the time I’ve also spent at every single shift change this week. I am not too particularly happy about that but it had to be done. Generally Sunday is my longest day of the week and when you add in the fact that I am also off tomorrow, I will be lucky if I only work 15 hours today.

I almost overslept, not getting up until five this morning (that’s late for me). I was going to spend some time writing something worthwhile this morning, but why mess up a perfectly good first thing in the morning bitch-fest with legibility and things that make sense?

I will have a bit of time tomorrow so want to catch up with writing about that trip along with a few other items as well. Maybe I will get to sleep in the next couple of days.

I still haven’t heard anything from my bosses about that district position coming open, but the new division manager is now aware that I want it, so I will just have to see how it goes this week. They may just transfer a guy back in who has been working in Alabama for the last couple of months. I lateral move means that they don’t have to offer it to the next person in the list and certainly wouldn’t be the first time I have seen them fill a position with a piece of crap, nor will it be the last.

I did finally break into the bottle of Maker’s Mark yesterday that Zonker brought over a couple of weeks ago. Damn good stuff actually. Had myself a few sips and immediately napped. Damn good stuff.

That’s about it for this morning. My brain is moving almost as slowly as my body today.

Stupid Phone

rmiles7721April 14, 2007Technology

I’ve been having problems with my cell phone for about a year now. I’m on my third battery since I got the LG and it is starting to get real irritating. The last one would go dead after a couple of hours, but this one just shuts my phone off at inopportune moments and I don’t realize it until several hours have gone by. Rather than dealing with Verizon this time I may just get a couple of extra batteries from the place where I got my last cordless phone battery. They have replacements cheaper than I can get them at Verizon, at least the last time I checked. I only have a few more months and I can get a new one anyway.

Going to California – Day Two

rmiles7721April 14, 2007Travel

When we pulled out of Dallas the next morning we headed north into Oklahoma City and took I-40 west back into the panhandle and into New Mexico. We drove most of the day with just bathroom breaks and a couple of meals. We did get to Route 666 in western New Mexico that evening and had to stop and get our pictures taken under the highway sign. Since it was twilight and I had left my flash at home they are pretty shitty pictures. The only thing that shows up on one is the sign that says 666, and on the other my friend Chris’ body is there, but his head is a blur.

Driving through the Rockies was wild. We hadn’t had much sleep and quite a bit of the trip is a blur. We kept on driving through the night after that. At some point early the next morning we stopped at the Grand Canyon and slept for awhile in the car. We crossed the continental divide at some point either before or after our stop there. Except for a brief stay in Dallas we had driven two days straight. Once the sun came up we got out and looked around the Grand Canyon, took some pictures, and left.

After the Grand Canyon we drove straight to Las Vegas, or our only other overnight stay. We spent most of the afternoon and evening hanging out in Vegas. Since I wasn’t 21 we got thrown out of Caesar’s Palace 🙂 and ended up hanging out at the Holiday Inn which in Vegas is still a casino. If I remember correctly (it’s been 20+ years) it was some kind of circus theme, a little more family oriented than the rest.

Once again it is time to start getting ready for work. I think perhaps I will sit down this afternoon and try to remember the time-line better, because the entire trip at least out to Vegas is one big blur. It would help if I didn’t type these right after I wake up. Even if I don’t remember properly I will write more about the trip later. This is my Open Track-back post for the weekend of April 14th-16th.

Trackposted to Outside the Beltway, Perri Nelson’s Website, Is It Just Me?, The Virtuous Republic, Stuck On Stupid, The Amboy Times, Pursuing Holiness, , Rightlinx, third world county, Woman Honor Thyself, stikNstein… has no mercy, , Pirate’s Cove, The Pink Flamingo, Dumb Ox Daily News, Right Voices, Blog @ MoreWhat.com, 123beta, Maggie’s Notebook, Adam’s Blog, basil’s blog, Phastidio.net, The Bullwinkle Blog, Cao’s Blog, , Jo’s Cafe, Conservative Cat, Allie Is Wired, Faultline USA, stikNstein… has no mercy, The Crazy Rants of Samantha Burns, The World According to Carl, Blue Star Chronicles, Gone Hollywood, and The Yankee Sailor, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

Linkfest Haven, the Blogger's Oasis

Online Backups

rmiles7721April 14, 2007Technology

This Post is Sponsored by Data Deposit Box.

I’m glad that I came across this because it’s been a couple of months since I made a good backup of my computer. That’s one of those no-brainers that a lot of people just don’t seem to do as often as they should. Sometimes the things that are easiest to do are the hardest to do and backing up data is one if those things.

If you’ve ever had a system crash where you lost all of your data, you know what I am talking about. It sucks to lose everything that you’ve worked on for months. I’m sure for some people it would even be longer than that. There are several different choices when making backups. Now that I am running Vista it is even easier, but most people still run Windows XP or something older, or perhaps a Mac. Backing up data is not that easy, and restoring it is even harder. I don’t trust anyone else to do it for me either. There are places, “Geek Squads”, that you can take your computer and have them back up your entire computer, but they won’t give any kind of guarantee that all of it is saved or even accessible for that matter.

Backing up over the Internet is one more option. Online backup is easier than you think. Usually you can get set up withing five minutes or so and it’s pretty cheap. Generally speaking it’s pretty cheap as well, about $2 per gig of data. That’s particularly nice if all you are backing up is documents and really important stuff. That’s generally what I do. The operating system and everything else I can restore from DVD and then my docs are kept in a separate backup as well.

I am getting ready to make a backup of my web site as well. I have most of my blog entries archived, at least up through the 1st of April but the mp3s and pictures are not. I should be able to save most of the site offline so that if there is a system crash I can get up and running again pretty easily.

If you don’t make regular backups, you need to ask yourself what would happen if your hard drive were to die right now. What would you lose?

Going to California…

rmiles7721April 13, 2007Travel

…with an aching in my heart.

I may have posted about driving to California at one point or another over the last few year, but I can’t get online right now to do a search and don’t care anyway. If I have I am going to rehash the subject. Writing about ex-girlfriends got me to thinking about my last trip out there and how surreal it was.

My friend Chris who passed away last year was home on leave and decided that he wanted to drive back home but didn’t want to try it by himself so I agreed to go with him and then would fly back. The fact that I didn’t have a driver’s license didn’t particularly bother me. He did quite a bit of the driving due to that and I would take over when he was just too damn tired to drive and he would crawl out the little window into the back of the pickup and sleep for awhile.

We left on Sunday morning at about eight and went straight out I-20 west to Dallas, which was out first stop. The longest part of the drive was damn Louisiana. Nothing but damn swamps all around, but it was cool as well. I don’t remember how long it took to get there, but it was dark. We ended up getting a hotel room there and crashed for the night. Nothing exciting really happened there, but I do remember that they had a radio station that played nothing but Heavy Metal. That was cool as hell and nothing like I experienced here in Redneckville. I wasn’t even aware that there were radio stations that played nothing but the music that I listened to.

I didn’t realize quite how late it was, I have to get ready for work, but will post more about the trip this afternoon when I get home. Sucks being left in the dark, don’t it?

Happy Friday the 13th

rmiles7721April 13, 2007Technology

I had this all typed up and ready to post but never did, so here it is.

That was weird. My site’s been down for I don’t know how long. I guess that was my Friday the 13th surprise. It did give me some time to take care of a few other items though. I have one more girl to do taxes for once I finish this. I guess she decided at the last minute it was time to file. Whatever.

One of the three district manager with my company out here is leaving. Monday is apparently going to be his last day. I just found out about it today. Since I’ve turned down the last few promotions that they offered me I don’t know if they are even going to talk to me about this one, but if they do I think I am going to take it. It’s three stores that are local to me. I think the farthest one is about nine miles from my house. It means more hours but it’s also about a $20-30k increase in pay. That would help out nicely right now. I don’t think they’ll make any changes for a couple of weeks anyway as my boss goes on vacation Tuesday. They aren’t going to leave a store without a manager and a district.

If the site happens to go down again, it is on the same server as my other two sites, so I generally post on a myspace blog. I think I have maybe posted about 15 times there in a year. It’s nothing particularly spectacular but I set it up initially to keep an eye on my son. If you have a myspace account stop by and say hello. My main space is http://www.myspace.com/shadowscope.

Late Nights

rmiles7721April 11, 20075Site News

One of the things that I was so upset about when I got home was the fact that due to my high food cost that I just can’t seem to get down lately I have to go in for drawer change every night. Those of you who have done anything in the restaurant business know what I am talking about.

The reason I dislike it so much is that I get up between four thirty and five every morning, and go work for eight to twelve hours. Then I come home and am busy for several more. I am tired and ready to be a vegetable by nine o’ clock or so but now I have to go back out and be in my store from eight thirty until nine thirty or ten and go back home. Just to be a presence. It is not necessarily a waste of time, but it is still a pain.

When I started with the company twenty years ago, that is what it was like. We worked six days a week and got an off day or two if we had the store covered, the money sucked, we had to be in for every single drawer change every single night. The burnout rate in restaurants was awful. I know maybe a handful of people that are still with the company. The last few years we seem to be heading toward a bit of an easier time. Managers are guaranteed two days off every week, although we still work six and then have two off so that we get an occasional weekend. I get three vacations a year, one of which is ten days. The money certainly isn’t terrible, above average for college graduates, of which I am not one, and supposedly the support from upper management has gotten better. That’s kind of a hit and miss proposition, it just depends on who you are working for.

This drawer change every night stuff seems like a return to the bad old days to me. I will do it, because I was told to, but I can almost guarantee that maybe three of us out of ten are actually doing it and there won’t be any repercussions against the ones who aren’t. That’s one of the bad things that has happened with changes in the business world. They are so scared to lose managers and keep retention levels high that when someone is actually doing a piss poor job nothing is done. It might take years before they are fired.

I figure if I can get my side jobs to the point where I can maintain an income level of at least $52k a year for at least two years, I’m gone. I am at least at 25% of that level right now and I have only been working hard on it since February. It is a lot more time and work than I realized it would be, but it will pay off in the long run.

Downtime

rmiles7721April 11, 2007Technology

I received a call earlier this afternoon from my Internet provider. Automated of course, but cool nonetheless. Charter will be doing maintenance in my area from midnight until six AM tomorrow morning, so if you email or post a comment it is very unlikely that I will respond until tomorrow evening particularly since Thursday is my meeting day and I might not get home until late.

Goals Meme

rmiles7721April 11, 20072Blogging, Uncategorized

I was tagged for this meme several days ago and just had several other things that needed doing, and then once I started writing completely skipped it. Vicezilla tagged me with this earlier in the week and I apologize for being remiss on getting it posted but here it is.

The premise of the “Gotta Get Goals” meme is to post 5-10 of your most over-the-top goals that you want to accomplish before leaving the earth. I’m not tagging anyone with this, but if you want to participate, just send me a trackback or link to my post.

As Vicezilla did, when I first started writing this I thought it would be easy but it’s not. For the last twenty years I have basically lived, or rather, made my living for my children as I will for the next twenty or so and as a result some of my goals are very selfish.

1. I want to take five or ten years and just travel the world. Heck, I could take ten years just to travel to all of the places that I have been or want to go in the U.S. I want to go to Hawaii and Scotland. I want to go check out Europe before it is overtaken entirely by the Middle Eastern societies. Europeans already dislike Americans anyway and it’s not going to get any better. I want to go to Tahiti and Australia. I want to see Japan. I even want to go hang out in the Great White North and have some brews with Bob and Doug, eh.

2. I don’t want to be filthy stinking rich, although that would be nice. I would like to not ever have to worry about finances or what I am spending this week and how it’s going to effect paying my bills next month. I suppose though if I were filthy stinking rich that would help along #1.

3. I want to be a writer. A REAL writer. I consider my brother a writer but I don’t know if I have the stick-with-it or even the ability to accomplish this. I really admire some of the bloggers that I read that just sock ’em dead with their posts. I read them and think “damn, I wish I could do that”.

4. I want to quit smoking. This is at times much more attainable than the other ones and at the same time just as far-fetched. I want to be able to run around and play with my children’s children’s children. My wife’s parents are both dead partially as a result of smoking and my father is the first male on his side of the family to live past 50 and I figure that is only because of the advances in medicine and awareness that we have made over the last 50 years.

5. I want to have a huge honking penis…Fucking Ron Jeremy huge…So that I can stand there and go Aaarrgghh like a pirate over my victim…Actually I couldn’t think of anything else but the mood around here has gotten much to somber and I had to lighten it up a bit. No, really. I’m fine with my teeny tiny white man penis…

…most of the time.

….no really.