November 2007

Bandwidth Hogs

rmiles7721November 18, 2007Technology

Although most of the equipment in the house uses a wired connection I do have a wireless router. My phone and the wife’s iPaq are both WiFi and when the Marine is at home his laptop uses it, as well as my brother’s. I usually just leave it open and don’t worry about security. As long as my neighbors aren’t on much and don’t use too much of my bandwidth I haven’t really worried about it but lately my connection has been pretty laggy.

I logged into my router tonight and discovered seven fucking devices connected. There are only two computers hooked up in the house getting an IP address, as well as our two handhelds. I set it back to using WEP and rebooted the damn thing. Guess they are going to have to find their own Internet connection now. What a PITA.

Stressed

rmiles7721November 18, 2007Site News

It wasn’t terribly busy today but I have come home particularly stressed out. Just got here a few minutes ago and I have to go back out to pick up one of my employees in about an hour and a half.

Apparently my Area People Director (recruiter/human resources) is meeting my manager in the morning to speak with her and try to talk her into staying. Hopefully he won’t succeed as I have already lost several employees and there are several more who are going to give their notice if they bring her back tomorrow. She’s already lost most of their respect as it is and has at least one or two legal investigations that are supposed to take place between now and Christmas, not to mention the fact that she needs to sign a shortage from about three weeks ago in her food as I’m not going to pay it.

Just the thought of them not letting her quit has me pissed off and my blood pressure is going up. Right now I’m listening to the girls arguing in the kitchen and it’s not helping much.

Each shift we change out the cash till for the new shift. The drawer is supposed to be taken back to the office in the company of at least one of the waitresses, that way we have a witness if the drawer is short. It only takes about ten minutes. It used to be a shorter deal but with the addition of credit cards a couple of years ago it stretched it out a bit. Still, all you do is add everything up, subtract the shift sales and that should leave you with what the till went out at. Simple, no? The only problem with it is that she won’t do that. She counts it down herself right out there on the floor without changing the drawer, leaving them short rolled change and ones, and then runs cash register shortages on the girls that might or might not have happened. They are all pretty upset about it since most of them do not normally have shortages. I found at least one in the bookwork that she had double booked, claiming that she had mistakenly taken the 1st one out, which she hadn’t, which means that somehow I have to get my boss to sign off on another shortage on her because of that. Since she double booked it that should have left her cash over by the same amount, but the money’s not there.

I have a feeling that tomorrow is going to be a shitty day that I just want to skip out on.

Getting the Heck out of Dodge…

rmiles7721November 18, 2007Parenting/Family

Yesterday was a fairly long day. There is so much that I need to do in the store where my manager just quit and I have only so much time to get it done. I finally ended up shooting out of there around 4:30 yesterday afternoon and came home to veg for awhile, then went back in around 8.

The big thing about most of these folks is that I’ve only been there one or two days a week over the last few months so they pretty much do whatever the heck they want and think they can get away with it. I am having to seriously crack down on them in order to get things right. We are going into the busy time of the year and I have to get these people right in a very short time. I have one girl that I can already see I need to let go very quickly. I am doing inventories of the floor at the beginning and end of every shift in order to see what their food usage has been and last night they were pretty slow so the usage should have been low. When I did the count last night I noticed that seven pieces of pie had been used. No huge deal when you think about it, but if the stuff weren’t rung up I might as well take thirteen bucks out of my checking account and burn it. I told my waitresses that when they turned their tickets in at the end of the shift I need the pie tickets separated from the rest. Shortly after that the biggest thief up there comes back with seven dollars and says ‘I need you to ring me up, my daughter bought a pie and I wanted to make sure it get’s verified’. Yeah right.

So she paid for the pie, which was most likely just given away to whomever and not sold as a whole pie but at least we’ve set the ground rules and she is going to have to come up with a new way to steal from me in order to make her money. I imagine she will be quitting before the month is out anyway since now that I know for sure I am going to stay on her ass daily. I already have her replacement starting training Wednesday anyhow.

The wife is driving up to the Carolinas on Tuesday to pick our son up and bring him home for Thanksgiving. I think I’ve gotten her to break the trip up and go see our friend in Hilton Head. I means a total of a couple of extra hours but it’s better than trying to drive eight or nine hours straight. We still aren’t sure where the girls are going to be yet. She might take them with her but we may also have them with a friend of ours. The only problem with that is that I will have to pick them up at certain times and there just isn’t any guarantee that I will be able to leave at those times. Unfortunately for me as a district manager, we (and the guys above me) actually work MORE hours during holidays and make sure the store managers get the heck out of Dodge to be with their families.

Cancun Vacations

rmiles7721November 17, 2007Travel

* Sponsored by Mexican Vacation Villas.

A few years back the wife and a friend of her’s took their mothers to Mexico on vacation. They spent about a week in Cancun. I guess it was a bit more than a few years ago since she was a couple of months pregnant with our son. That would have been in 1988 I think. Had to be since he was born in ’89. Anyway, Cancun is located on the ‘Mexican Riviera’, right on the eastern portion of the country on the Caribbean. It’s a pretty beautiful area even if I have only seen it in photographs. The area stretches down the Yucatan peninsula for about 60 miles or so. It’s definitely not Cancun though. Cancun is full of high-rises and with it comes a ‘party attitude’.

The Mayan Riviera as it is known is more serene, with smaller restaurants, shops, and less of an American influence. It’s also much more laid back than Cancun is. When the wife and her mom and friend went I do know they went to Tulum, which is a really nice area, almost hidden away from the hustle and bustle of everything else.

Mexico Vacation Villas has luxury vacation villas about 15 minutes from the Cancun Airport, pretty centrally located right between Cancun and Playa del Carmen and within a short driving distance of just about anything you might want to do, that is if you want to do anything at all aside from hanging out at the beach with a drink, relaxing.

Go check out Mexican Vacation Villas where you can get a list of all the direct flights into the Cancun airport along with information on all of the activities in the area, maps of the golf courses, directions to Wal-Mart of course, recipes and useful phrases (downloadable) for things you might be looking for such as food, bathroom, etc. You will also find contact information from folks that have stayed in the Villas in the past so that you can really get a good idea of what they are like.

Queasy…

rmiles7721November 17, 2007Parenting/Family

I woke up this morning not wanting to get out of bed. I am not sure if it’s because I feel sick, which I do, or just didn’t get enough sleep last night. I had a hard time getting a bit of shuteye. The darned cat is in heat and just would not shut the fuck up. I finally locked the cats in our bathroom with their food and litter box and had to put something in front of the door so that they couldn’t get it open. Our bathroom has double doors that you just push/pull to get open rather than having a door knob that you turn and the first time I put her in there last night she rammed the door hard enough to get it open. The second time I put them both in there I made sure to put something in front of it. I really need to get the stupid cat fixed. Over the long run she’ll be safer that way and won’t be quite as interested in getting outside as she is now.

Looks like the Marine will be coming home for Thanksgiving. He’s got four or five days of leave, so I reserved a car yesterday. The wife is going to drive up on Tuesday afternoon after Pete’s dentist appointment to pick him up and then she will be taking him back on Sunday I guess. I wish I could be a bit more help. Originally I was going to take Tuesday off at least, and that was going to be my last day off until the 1st of December. Now I just don’t know if I will be able to take it off since I don’t have a manager in one of the stores (but that’s a good thing in it’s own way). At least I know I can stop the attrition with the employees quitting.

Anyway, I am really looking forward to seeing him. The family is doing Thanksgiving dinner at my Aunt’s house in Smyrna and I should have just enough time to get there by 4PM on Thursday if I hump it. The biggest challenge will be to make sure that everyone shows up for work.

I guess it’s time to get ready and head my happy ass in to work now.

Weekend Open Trackback Post

rmiles7721November 17, 2007Site News

Hey you guys. The purpose of this post is for you to share your entries that might be interesting or maybe you just want to get some new folks over to see what your great writing is all about. All you have to do is head on over to Linkfest Haven and use their ping form and send this entry a ping. A link to your post will show up at the bottom of this post for all to see and click on.

About half the time the track-backs end up in my spam folder but when I get home this evening I will publish them, just give it a chance. If you don’t see it here by tomorrow morning shoot me an email using the contact form on the sidebar and I will go in and find it.

Linkfest Haven, the Blogger's Oasis

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Ringtones

rmiles7721November 17, 2007Technology

Since I picked up the new cell phone I can’t just use the GetItNow apps bundled with most of the Verizon phones to pick up my games and ringtones anymore. Even when I was using them I would still download quite a few off of the Internet and transfer using Bitpim or a program like that.

Now I just use Windows Explorer and copy them over to my ringtones folder. The i760 uses true polyphonic ringtones that I can either record myself in mp3 format or that I have purchased off of the Internet at places like MSN Emotions Ringtones. I prefer the free ringtones myself. They have all kinds of different sounds for phones including Hip Hop Ringtones that don’t really interest me, Dance ringtones, Country, Rock and quite a few funny ones as well as theme Ringtones from movies and television.

They also have the option to listen to them on the site so that you know exactly what you are getting before you download. Like most of the Ringtone places on the Internet it is subscription based and will get charged to your monthly cellphone bill so that you have the option to cancel it by sending a text message.

Back to Work Again…

rmiles7721November 16, 2007Site News

Well, I had planned on posting a bunch more anyway. I did manage to get tomorrow’s Photo Hunt up anyway but that’s about it. I watched about half of 28 Weeks Later and then it was time to pick up the girls. Friday is normally pizza night for them so I ordered and then Pete hung out with me watching the rest of the movie. She loves scary movies. It was a bit more gory than scary and certainly not even close to as good as the first but that’s the way it is with sequels most of the time.

We decided through mutual consent to make it movie night and everyone sat down to watch Fantastic 4: Rise of the Silver Surfer after that. Not too bad, but very cheesy, like the comics. I enjoyed it (not to mention Jessica Alba, although she looks better as a brunette). The only problem with watching her is that it makes me feel like a damned pedophile. Yuck.

Anyway, I got a couple of calls this afternoon and apparently my manager in the shithole store is gone now. The store could be better if I could only run it with a couple of folks that care for awhile. Looks like I may get that chance since I may be running it without a manager at all through the holidays. Good thing she was already going to be off this weekend anyway. I means I won’t have to make any major changes to the schedule until Monday.

The only issue is that she is my second manager there in seven months and that doesn’t look good at all.

Tomorrow’s another day and hopefully it’s going to be a good one. Back tomorrow…

Samsung i760

rmiles7721November 16, 2007Technology

One of the things I have noticed about my new phone is that when I leave for work I have to make sure and turn WiFi off as well as Bluetooth if I’m not using GPS. I don’t use a Bluetooth headset so that becomes unnecessary  unless I am going somewhere I haven’t been before. Samsung supplies a normal battery as well as an extended lithium battery for the i760 and it’s a good darn thing but even with the extended battery, as I discovered last week, if WiFi and Bluetooth are both left on all day it can seriously drain the thing. I finally started carrying the extra normal battery with me just in case.

HTPC Thoughts

rmiles7721November 16, 2007Technology

When I rebuild my HTPC after the first of the year (I’ve had to put it off until then) I think I am going to try and run everything so that most of it is in the basement. My network router is down there anyway so all I really need to do is to run a bit of fiber cable from the living room into the basement and then pick up a couple of wireless doodads as well. Either that or I will try and get the smallest case I can find and then start using more USB TV tuners than I have in the past. There are some pretty nice ones out there. Mainly I just don’t want all of the wiring and a big old PC case sitting next to the entertainment center. We have doors on it that close so that it just looks like a big cabinet and having a PC sit beside it is somewhat counterproductive.