Sunday, June 27, 2004

Off to the Honeymoon!

The wedding went off without a hitch thanks to all of those involved. I am now a married man and have a bad-ass titanium comfort fit ring to prove it. I am gearing up for the honeymoon Becca and I are starting on tomorrow. We are going to a fun place in NE Washington and then going into Seattle for the 4th of July. It should be a blast.

On that note, I do not know when I will be able to post again. It could be tomorrow or maybe week from tomorrow, it will just depend on how plentiful the internet is up there. So for the select few priviledged enough to check up on my ramblings from time to time, I did not die I just got married. Some might even say that is like dying, but I do not think so, I think it will be a ton of fun.

I would like to thank everyone that helped out with the wedding, Becca and I are grateful. I will be back in a week or so if you don't hear from me before then.

Saturday, June 26, 2004

The Final Countdown

In roughly 12 hours and 9 minutes I will no longer be in the singles category. The big day has finally arrived and I am getting quite excited. We had the rehersal tonight and that went well. We also ate a very good dinner at Cottonwood Grille, one of Becca and I's favorite dining spots. All in all, a pretty damned good night.

One of my best friends, Ben, flew in this morning and happily helped me out throughout the day. That was very cool of him to fly up and help me like this. I am glad he was able to come. He is also a groomsman so it isn't like he had a ton of a choice. :)

I will be glad when tomorrow is over. We spent most of this morning decorating the church and reception area and it all looks very cool. Becca's family put a lot of effort into the decorations and it shows. Very cool. All of the pressure that has been building up over the past couple of months will finally come to pass and Becca and I can get on with the next stage in our lives. It will be fun.

The theme of the wedding was Skittles. Yes, you heard me right, Skittles. Taste the Rainbow. All of the tables at the reception have Skittles colored tableclothes and the wedding cake is also pokadotted. It is a very colorful wedding. The bridesmaids are in blue, green, and purple dresses and the groomsmen are wearing orange, red, and yellow ties. Once I get some pics I may post a few of em on here. I know I have said I will post pics before and I will, you have know clue how busy I have been lately. :)

We go on our honeymoon on Sunday and hopefully the place we will be at has wifi or some sort of internet connection. Yes, I am a nerd. If so, I will post while on my honeymoon as well. We will just have to see.

Thursday, June 24, 2004

Mogwai the Sage

Last night I went to bed at 1:30am. This morning I get a call from my dad about tuxes at 8am. My fiance then called twice once a little after 8 and again at 10. I have a huge to do list waiting for me to tackle as soon as I am done with this post. Most of my relatives are flying in either tomorrow or Saturday. One of my groomsmen flies in tomorrow. Everything must be done in two days. Packing for the honeymoon, moving into the house, all of the wedding stuff, paying the bills before we leave(Becca's job), etc. This onslaught of minute tasks and responsibilities has driven Becca and I to our wit's end. Anyone that says weddings are a breeze to plan is lying to you. Weddings are a pain in the ass and my sagely advice to anyone that is thinking about getting married is this, ONLY DO IT ONCE!!! Find the person that is right for you and make damn sure they are and then get married. Or if you feel like getting married after you have only known her for three weeks and have been internet dating for two of those weeks, go to Vegas and get hitched there. Save yourself the money and effort and after you get divorced from internet chick and find the true love of your life, then spend the time and money on a real wedding.

If I do not post for a day or two it is because I am swamped. BTW I got Gmail a few days ago and it rocks. All free email providers should emulate Google. Their service rocks.

Later,

Mogwai

Tuesday, June 22, 2004

Disgruntlement

This whole moving to a new house thing is driving me nuts. I am kind of a slob when it comes to organization and cleanliness of my personal space. My room may look dirty but I know where everything in it is 99% of the time. Except my dress shoes....I miss them and have no clue where they went. Anyway, with this move occurring all of my crap is in boxes. If I am searching for "Item A" and I can't find it, odds are it is in a box or the garbage. What box, I don't know, what house is it in, I don't know. Are you starting to see a theme?

I do not like it when I can't find something, I especially don't like not even being able to narrow its location down to even a house. On top of it all, I am a pack rat. Issues of magazines from three years ago, yup I still have them. Wired, 2600, Maximum PC, PC Gamer, Maxim, Men's Health(do I use them, no, but they make me feel healthier), Mad, etc. All of these magazines are neatly stacked and I can't figure out what to do with them. I do not want to throw them away but I don't know where they will go in my new house. With the computer mags I think I am going to make a binder and just cut out all of the useful info and put it in one place. We will see. Anywho, have a good night.

Monday, June 21, 2004

Why History?

At least one person has expressed an interest in me talking about history a bit more. I appreciate his input and want to present to my readers why I became a historian. First, a bit about me so you know where I am coming from when I discuss issues of historical import.

I graduated with a bachelors degree from Boise State University in Boise, Idaho in the Spring of 2004. My degree in History with an emphasis in Secondary Education. My historical specialization is in Chinese and Japanese history, though I am pretty well versed in European and U.S. history. My favorite time periods to study are Tokugawa Japan (think the previous 200 years before the movie, "The Last Samurai"), World War II, Colonial American history, and 19th and 20th Century Chinese history. Why do I like Asian history? Because when I was about four years old I saw Big Bird and Snuffleufiguss (sp) touring China on Sesame Street and have been hooked ever since. See, sometimes television does have a positive influence on children. :)

My grandfather was also a huge influence in my studying history. He was a WWII vet and like so many vets, he loved to tell stories. This is going to be kind of a long post but I am going to tell you a story that my grandpa told me before he died. This is why I think history is cool.

When my grandpa volunteered for military service after Pearl Harbor he was sent to Germany. His job while in Germany was to be an inflantry escort for the Sherman tanks. His unit was tasked with making sure that the tanks got up to the front without getting shot at by anti-tank fire. They were to walk ahead of the tanks while in enemy territory and take out any snipers or panzerschreck (anti-tank) troops before the tanks fell prey to them.

One day while walking along, my grandpa felt a sharp pressure in his chest and then heard a gunshot. He fell down and thought to himself that he was as good as dead. There would be no way for a medic to care for a severe chest wound in the field and so my grandpa lay on the ground waiting for death to come. He waited for several seconds and death still hadn't come. He got up a good deal of courage and put his hand to his right breast where most of the pain was emitting from. He drew his hand away to see how much blood he was losing but to his great surprise there was no blood to be had.

My grandpa's hands scrabbled around his chest, feeling for any moisture that might be blood but they found none. Perplexed my grandpa hefted himself off the ground and put his hand into his breast pocket. He withdrew his old pocket watch, the german sniper's true victim. Though his chest was badly bruised and his ribs ached and were stiff. My grandpa had been saved from certain death by his pocket watch.

Now you may think that my grandpa was an extremely lucky man, which he was, but the story does not end there.

Several months since his last run in with a sniper, my grandpa was again walking out in front of the tanks. Unbeknownst to him, another sniper lay in wait in the bushes ahead of him and to his right. A shot rang out and again my grandpa hit the ground. Upon surveying the damage, my grandpa probably wished that the first sniper's bullet would have killed him. My grandpa had just been shot in the worst place a man could be shot in, his crotch.

The pain was immense but again he found no trace of blood coming from his nether region. After the first sniper incident, my grandpa mourningly retired his faithful pocket watch and bought a replacement. On the day of the second shooting, pocket watch number two was in that small pocket just above the main pocket on the right side of his pants. It looked as if my grandpa was going to have to buy a new pocket watch when he returned to town.

For the longest time I did not believe the story I just told you. How could a man be shot twice and saved twice by a duo of pocket watches? It was just too much chance and not enough solid evidence. And then one day while sitting and my grandparents' house, my grandpa came from the back room with two round and silver objects in his huge hands. He had kept the pocket watches all this time and one still had the bullet lodged into the housing of the watch.

History is an amazing entity. It should not be viewed as a thing filled with old guys and events so far removed from the present day that no one needs to care about it. History should be viewed as a collection of stories. The tale my grandpa told me was history, it was HIS STORY. Everyone has stories, some stories are just more famous and have a greater impact on how we live today than others. Nonetheless, all stories are important to keep and share. History is important to share as well. This is something I hope to do with all of you as this blog progresses.

BTW if you were wondering what happened to my grandpa after the second shooting, a grenade landed within his vicinity a short time later and lodged a piece of shrapnel into his shin. Nothing life threatening but enough to get him home to my grandma again.

Improvements Needed

As I look over this blog, I know it is lacking. One key element I am plan on implementing is the use of pictures. I have a bunch of pics I would love to upload to the site I just haven't had time to do so. For those of you who actually read this thing, be patient, pictures are coming.

Other ideas I have tossed around are as follows: I would like to make one post a week on video games. I play tons of them and have many opinions about them. I would also like to do a weekly diatribe on a given historical topic. I am a historian after all. Do you think the implentation of theme days is a good idea?

Another thing I would like reader input on is the use of sidebars, hit counters, and other web applications. What do you think of them, what is overkill, and what is worthless? I am new to this stuff and would like to get this blog up to speed so it stands out amongst others a little more. Any advice is appreciated.

On another note, I think I am going to go into another bout of Civilization 3 playing again. Civ 3 is easily one of my favorite PC games out there right now. If you like strategy, history, and conquering third world countries that still have knights with your armament of ICBMs, I strongly suggest you pick this game up.

Madhuban Monday

Good Morning!

I had to wake up early today to get my dog to the vet so now I have a lot of free time that I normally put towards sleeping. I am not one of those people that can go back to sleep once they have awakened so I have been checking up on my favorite websites and watching CNN.

Today will probably not be horribly eventful. I am hoping to go to Madhuban for lunch. Madhuban is a pretty decent restaurant that specializes in Indian cuisine. Since my buddy Dylan is back in town odds are he will be up to going there. You have to get your curry kick somehow and this is how we do it when we don't feel like cooking ourselves. The only thing that sucks about Madhuban is the fact that they are closed on Tuesdays. For some reason, whenever my friends and I feel like eating there, it is on a Tuesday. Obviously our dining habits and this place's hours don't jive.

On another note, Space Ship 1 seems to have achieved its goal this morning and I am very excited about this. For those of you that don't follow space stuff, Space Ship 1 is one of the top contenders for the X Prize. The prize is awarded to the first totally privately funded team that can build a reusable craft that can take three people 62.5 miles above the earth once and then repeat the feat again two weeks after the first launch. I am hopeful that Space Ship 1 will get this prize. Why, because quite honestly I think people can get to space much cheaper than what NASA does it for. Why should space be relegated to government use only? All of us look at the stars and those of us that are capable, should be able to visit them someday. We live in a very cool epoch of human history.

Sunday, June 20, 2004

A Day of Rest aka: Dealing With A Hangover

Well, as you can see from the previous post, I was pretty much out of it after last night's bachelor party. I think I had eleven drinks throughout the night and four of them were whats called a "Bucket of Blues". What is a Bucket of Blues? A very large drink that has about four or five shots of various vodkas and liquors in. I pounded two of them in less than 16 seconds a piece. Yes, they timed me.

After those drinks came a flurry of Rock Lobsters and Liquid Cocaines, topped off with a Black Opal. The bachelor party was a blast and it was capped when my guys met up with Becca and her girls for one drunken bar hopping session in the evening. Lots of fun to be had by all.

Then came this morning.

I don't get hangovers very often but when I do they tend to be monsterous. This morning was not as bad as I expected but it definitely wasn't pleasant. One sure fire way to make a hangover disappear is with a nice greasy breakfast. Enter the bacon and eggs with toast. After breakfast, pretty much all crappiness left my system and I just felt a tad wore out.

I am going over to Becca's parents house for a Father's Day BBQ (he is going to be my father in law in a few days) and that should be fun. Just so you guys don't get the idea that I hate my dad, he and my mom are in Jackpot gambling this weekend. There was some country music concert down there and so they went to Nevada for a couple of days.

I think today is like the calm before the storm. The wedding is in six days and I am unsure how the next five will be. Most of the details and planning are done so I am hoping it will be an easy week. We shall see.

WOW.....

If you were as smashed as I am right now, you might be in the hospital. I am quite surprised I can even type, let alone edit myself right now. I can hardly stand up straight let alone type. I spelled straight wrong initially but I was able to correct myself....way to go me. Damn.........damn......I can't get sober....mothers against drunk drivers would hate me right now. But I foiled their plan, I DIDN'T DRIVE!! My buddy, Tony did. Hah!!! All of you bitter mothers against drunk driving, I didn't kill your kid, someone else did. Should I publish this......sure. My head spins. I am getting married in a week. My spelling seems like some incomprehensible equation.....I don't know how I am getting it right but I am. Hah! Dreaming...of meeting the right girl...and I did...and she is marrying me...odd.....I love her so much. Why am I saying this? Should I start a new paragraph? YES!!

Okay I did. Kieth got me drunk. I before E. Except after C. Damn the C.....you passed but not by much. My lip is sticking out now...this is a new thought therefore, I should start a new paragraph. But I don't why....BECAUSE this is my blog and I win. HAH! HAH! WOW!

New paragraph.....why am I writing this? Be sure to indent....I did.....good. I get an A. I am a technically perfect writer......sober anyway. Okay maybe not...I had trouble spelling maybe....that means I am less than sober. I told you I would be. I am spelling well, I win the spelling be. This is a brainstorm. I am free-writing right now.. This will sound odd tomorrow. Yup, it will.

Bye-bye and nite- night. I spelled it both ways to cover my bases. You say tomatoe....I say I spelled it wrong. I hope everyone gets home safe. I didthanks to good friends.

I will eat Indian food tomorrow and it will be good. YAY! This is giberish I should be ashamed of. But possibly funny. Who knows? The Shadow does. Dang. Peoples' voices....they are here...good.

Later. Yeah. Sorry. Little drunk right now. Yup. Publish this.

Saturday, June 19, 2004

The Vacation Commences

As of 9:30pm this evening, I AM ON VACATION!!!!! And will remain in this state until July 10. This is good. I have been getting sick of work and people in general. I also get married one week from today and have a honeymoon to go on....minor details. :)

I am really starting to get excited about the wedding. I know I picked the right person and have absolutely no hesitation when saying that Becca is definitely the person for me. The bachelor party is tomorrow so if I post tomorrow I will more than likely be less than sober. This may be good or bad for the three people that read my posts....wait it won't matter because I think all of them will be there. Do other people besides my friends read this blog? If you do, post a comment. I wouldn't mind knowing if other people are actually paying attention to me or if I am just rambling on into dead space. Regardless, I will probably keep posting because I find it relaxes me.

My computer is up and running (obviously) and that is good. I think I can keep it happy for a few more months until the huge upgrade. Other than this stuff....nothing big and amazing to report. I will post either tomorrow or Sunday depending on sobriety and time. Until then, have a good day.

Thursday, June 17, 2004

A Sick Day

It does not matter how crappy I feel, but everytime I call in sick to my job I feel better. I think it is the fact that I know I am screwing them that makes me just a tad happier but whatever it is I like it. So today I called in sick. My allergies are still acting up and I sound like crap; I think I may actually have a tad of a cold on top of eveything but what can you do?

I went to BSU today and finalized all of my teaching creditials so that is good. I am now totally qualified to warp the minds of this nation's youth. Some of them don't need too much of my help and are already well on their way to a lucrative career in the food service industry all by themselves. You may be wondering what it is exactly that I teach. I am qualified to teach grades 7-12, history, and general social studies. I have always liked history and figured the only way I am going to get paid for it is if I teach or write. I am working on getting into both. We shall see.

I also went power supply shopping today and found a nice Antec file server case with a 450 watt psu for $130.00. It was cheaper for me to get the psu with a case rather than by itself so now I am the proud owner of a new case. I have a Lian Li case as it stands right now but I think I will migrate everything into the Antec and leave the Lian Li for something else, not sure what yet. I know there are those of you out there who wonder why I just didn't get the psu online and save a ton of money. The answer is simple, I need my computer fully functional by Saturday and am willing to pay for it.

I will post pics of the new case later. Though I do not think it will be too spectacular.

The Pole Whackers

At my job, people are not very bright as I have mentioned before. I also do very little at my job, as I have also mentioned before. One thing I do enjoying doing there is people watching. Throughout my day I see some very curious things. One trend I have noticed as of late is people running into the poles that hold up the roof.

People will come in from outside, grab a cart, and start meandering throughout the store. While they trod about they will usually read the coupon book or be talking on their cell phones. The really talented ones do both. One thing that some of them don't do is see the poles that are right in front of them. Despite the shiny diamond plating that these poles sport, I have seen three people ram them this week. It is not like these things just jump out in front of you, they don't move at all and they are a decent size. So why do people keep whacking into them? The world may never know.

A scary thought is the fact that all of the people in the building be they shoppers or employees drove to get there. If these people are so unattentive with shopping carts just imagine how they are while driving around in their big trucks and SUVs.

I quiver in terror.

BTW it looks like my power supply is the only thing that will need replacing from the surge event. YAY! I wasn't expecting to upgrade my system for at least another five months.

Wednesday, June 16, 2004

Danger Will Robinson!!! Danger!!!

Today was supposed to be a joyous day, my two Western Digital 250 giggers arrived today. I needed these two hd's for two reasons, one, two replace two of my aging 120 gig drive, and two, I can always use the extra space. So I put one of the hds in and it began formatting like a good hd. With much satisfaction I took a shower, knowing that soon I would have a lot of extra space to fill with digital goodness. My shower was good and it unclogged my sinuses for a little bit. I jumped out of the shower and went to check up on the status of the formatting job. This is when everthing went down the drain.

I enter my room to find the computer turned off...strange...very strange indeed. There was no way the formatting had finished so this was troubling. I hit the power button to no avail. After a couple more tries, I checked my connections, everything was plugged in, things were going from bad to worse.

I felt by my power supply and things were much, much warmer than they should have been. I then unplugged my power cord from the surge protector and put it directly into the wall, the computer booted. Victim #1: The surge protector.

The computer booted up and this made me happy but the happiness was soon erased by a very courteous message that said, "We apologize for the inconvenience, but Windows has failed to load." Well at least my computer had the decency to tell me I was getting fucked politely.

From there I went into the bios and loaded all of the fail-safe options. The computer safely failed from here on out. It then proceeded to boot into the Windows boot error prompt in which I tried to get into safe mode but crashed the system instead. I then tried to get into the bios and the system would crash while trying to load the bios. What does this all mean, my system is FUBAR at the moment and I must go looking for survivors. Oh yeah, now everytime I press the power button it makes a nice increasingly load electrical buzzing noise that builds up until the system powers off. Meaning....Victim #2: My power supply.

The bottom line is that the power supply became overloaded by the stress of having so much stuff running on it. I knew I was getting close to capacity but I did not think I was THAT close. It was a 430 watt and I had 4 hds running on it, along with the rest of the usual computing devices.

Now I must go look for survivors of the great surge. I am hoping that my hds lived and did not become fodder for the Electrical God's consumption. I will update as survivors are rescued....more news at ten.

Tuesday, June 15, 2004

An administrative day.

Despite my allergies clogging my head and making it feel like I am carrying a bowling ball on top of it as if I were some African tribal water carrier, I have much to do today. To add a sporting touch to the day's to-do list I have taken sinus tablets to ease the bigness of my head. Why is that such a big deal you ask, because they make me as high as a kite.

First, I will head over to Costco and pick up the 4th Season of the Simpsons. WOOHOO!!!! Hopefully they will start picking up the pace on their releases because at the rate they are going I will be thirty by the time I have all of them. After the Costco stop I am going down to the dreaded Boise State University....guess you know where I am from now. I have to turn in all of my paperwork for certification for being a teacher. After that I think I am going to try to get in touch with some friends and go to lunch. I also need to stop by the bank. All in all, not the most interesting of days but a necessary one.

I will post more later on tonight. Later!

Sunday, June 13, 2004

Moving Sucks!

As I type this, I am scanning a room filled with boxes, neatly stacked back issues of 2600, Wired, and Maximum PC, and one huge mess. Since I am getting married, I must pack all of my crap up and move it into my new house. I am a horrible mover. I am a pack rat and do not like to throw things away, therefore I have tons of crap I have no use for but no will to chuck; this is not a good mindset when moving.

Over the next couple of days I am going to need to overcome this monumental task. My buddy Dylan is doing the same thing right now, only in Oregon. He is moving back into town and so it will be good to hang out with him on a more frequent basis. Dylan, if you are reading this, I feel your pain. Moving is a bitch.

The upside to moving is that I find all of these old cds that I did not know I had. Most of them have either old pictures on them or various other files. I found a cd earlier with Pizza Worm on it. For those that have not played this game, it is just like the snake game a lot of cell phones have on them but with better graphics. I love this game but have not been able to locate it within my cds for a few years now. I am going to have to start playing again. :)

Ahh...The Joys of Being Port Scanned

When it comes to computers I am kind of a security nut. One of my side jobs entales some computer security related stuff and so I consider myself pretty well versed in the world of hackerdom. So This morning just for fun, I do my bi-weekly check of my router's log file just to see if anything interesting shows up. This week something showed up.

My log was saying that it had detected unauthorized port scan attempts on one of my networks and it listed the IP address. For those of you not into this stuff, port scanning is basically like a burgler coming up to every window in your house and seeing if any of them are unlocked. Fortunately, all of mine were locked down.

Just for fun I checked to see what the source of these unauthorized attempts was and found it to be a middle school in China. Well, it is good to know that I have deterred those malicious Chinese 8th graders from getting into my system. But they wil be back....the Chinese 8th graders always come back. :)

As a funny little side note, my name Mogwai is the Chinese translation for devil.

Two Weeks From Today...

I will be getting married. YAY!! I have been going out with my fiance for four years now and have absolutely no worries about it whatsoever. I think it will be fun.

My long awaited GI Joe boxed set of the first part of Season One came today. I watched some of the eps a little earlier. Man...when I was little that cartoon rocked so much...now it is just kind of odd. The laws of physics really do not apply to the Joes and little things I never caught on to when I was little, glaringly detract from the cartoon now. It is kind of sad.

Well that is all for tonight.

Saturday, June 12, 2004

My Mall Fixation

While I am thinking about it and can't seem to find my way to sleep let me tell you about my fascination with shopping malls.

When I was little, the first mall I went into was the Blue Lakes Mall in Twin Falls, ID. It was a small shopping center with the obligatory mall fountain you could toss coins into and the floors were covered with a weird red speckled carpet that looks like something you would see at a Chuck E Cheese. I loved going to the mall. By today's standards the mall was extremely small and probably only had about 20 stores. To a six or seven year old Mogwai, it was huge and I relished the time I spent there. As I got older so did the mall. The fountain was eventually covered up and the mall was remodeled beyond recognition. Most of it was torn down. A bigger mall was built on the other side of town the old mall became home to several second tier stores. Eventually the old mall morphed into a Fred Meyer and remains in that state to this day.

So what is the point of the story? Malls represent culture. When baseball card collecting was a huge fad, every mall had a baseball card shop. Then ravers and goths became all the rage and so now most major malls have a Hot Topic. If you want to test the pop culture waters, you need only go to a mall. Teenagers migrate from the schools to the malls to socialize and do their part to add to our consumer driven economy. The modern American mall is a one stop shop for our materialistic culture. Every town that wants to grow must build one and most dying towns have the shell of one that is now filled with dollar shops and boarded up storefronts. The history of the mall is a history of modern America. Incidentally, they have also become the topic of one of the books I am working on. Now if anyone ever asks you what the use of a History degree is, you can tell them it is so people can go into the world and write books about shopping centers. :)

A Night at the Movies

I have just returned from The Chronicles of Riddick and I wish I could say that it was one of the better movies I have seen in a while. Unfortunately, this is not the case. The movie tries to be six plots at the same time and really doesn't pull off any of them. I was glad that I saw it for free (God bless movies passes) and the upside is, I got to see my buddy Jake tonight.

Jake is hands down one of my best friends. I have known him since the sixth grade and can safely say he is as close to being a brother to me as possible without being related. Anywho, I was walking to a sports bar near the ungodly expensive theater to deliver a wedding invitation to a girl that works there and Jake just happens to come walking up next to me. This was odd because he is in the National Guard and he is supposed to be doing his two week training stint right now. They gave him the night off so he and some of his military buddies decided to hit a movie and invited me to come along. I obliged seeing that I did not have a whole lot going on. My fiance, Becca is going to school to become a nurse and works nights on the weekend at one of the local hospitals. This leaves me with a very open-ended weekend schedule.

Back to The Chronicles of Riddick. The movie was a good action movie and was entertaining at that base level. But then the writers decided to try to weave a plot and threw in a weird love story, a very Roman-esque empire filled with a bunch of people in what looked to be Skeletor outfits left over from He-Man, and of course a man who finds himself in the shoes of the one that must topple this regime. It was a pretty canned movie, no real innovation to speak of, and some very odd CG touches that hindered several scenes in the movie. If you want to see a prime example of blatant over use of CG and digital editting techniques go see The Chronicles of Riddick. If you think the story sounds good and feel like watching a movie, dust off your Star Wars tapes. We will not have to wait much longer to own that trilogy on DVD thankfully.

Friday, June 11, 2004

Off to be a Repairman!

Good Morning!

I figured that I would post something before I went to work and to fix a couple's computer. The computer I am going to work on is an older couple's machine. They don't have a lot of computer expertise but like to use the one they have. It went on the fritz and they called a repairperson and he gave them the run around and was going to charge then a ton of money for a simple reinstall of Windows 98. Upon hearing this, I told them I would do the required work for free.

I don't think it is right that people, especially older people, should have to pay someone $75.00 an hour for fifteen minutes worth of work. I just doesn't set well with me. With this mindset, I find myself a rather busy person doing free computer repair work for a multitude of people. I kind of like this because I feel like I am doing my part to reign in the IT industry and the enormous fees they charge to do minute things.

Off to work I go!

My Place of Employment

As you are reading this, you may be wondering why I am dedicating an entire post to my job. To put it quite simply it is because I loathe and abhor my job. What do I do? Not a lot. I work for a large company that is in the business of selling things in very large quantities to people that have to pay to shop there. I am extremely overpaid given what I actually do there and really the only reason I have remained employed for as long as I have is because I perpetuate the myth that I actually work very very well.

A typical day for me may go something like this:

I arrive to work and barely swipe in on time. I sneak over to my department (Electronics) and proceed to the Dish Network display that is conveniently set up in my area. I then proceed to find something good on TV. Usually this ends up being TechTV, The History Channel, The Cartoon Network, or The Food Network. Having selected my viewing poison for the day, I meander over to where the rest of my co-workers are and get briefed on how the day has gone up to that point. I am usually the "closer" and therefore, do not have to put up with most of the crap that the other guys do. I rarely see my manager and only ever talk to a handful of my fellow prisoners in retail hell. This is how I like it. I come in late and by doing so I avoid the customers.

My job would be great if it were not for the dreaded cattle with credit cards that saunter through the big door on a scale that could only be described as slightly creepy. Why people would pay money to shop somewhere is beyond me. I do not think the store warrants the tithe that its members joyously hand over so that they may spend more money there and pay people like me. Most of the people that work with me tolerate the customers but only to the extent that we do not bludgeon them as they walk through the door. To say that I am cheerful and helpful to most people that walk into the building would be like saying Hitler put a mint on the pillow of every Jew that graced one of his concentration camps. I know I have said it before but damn, I really hate most of the "members" that frequent the establishment that pays me money to watch TV. Remember, a "memeber" is just a nice word for a penis.

Anyhow, enough negativity....on to the fun! I get paid three times more than a McDonalds worker to do five times less than them. I watch TV and occasionaly help a customer with such difficult question as, "Where is the printer ink at?" As mentioned before, I almost never see my manager and when I do it is usually when he is on his way out. I almost always leave early and best of all, I am immune to almost all repercussions of my actions while on the job. If I tell I customer to go screw themselves, if I here about it at all it is usually several days after the event. I have tried to get fired for about a year now and they won't do me the favor. So I labor on. Throughout this blog you are likely to get some anecdotes about my job so consider this the primer to get you up to speed.

BTW for those of you who think my job sounds great and think I am crazy, you try dealing with people asking you the same five or six questions ad nauseum and then pace about 4 miles on a concrete floor all day for years on end and tell me how you feel.

WOOHOO First Post!

Well....weclome to Mog's Blog. Where do I begin? I am 24, about to get married, and am working on at least one book, maybe two. I am a nerd, let us not make any qualms about this; a night of relaxation for me would be coming home, mixing myself a White Russian, and watching GI Joe cartoons. For the two or three people that may actually read this....you will quickly learn that I am a cartoon junkie.
Speaking of the handful of bored blog hunters that may stumble upon this, congratulations, you have just won an all expense paid trip to the land of mediocraty. It is possible that this blog will grow and gain a following. It is equally possible that this will tank and after a handful of posts I realize that my life is not as nearly as interesting as I would like to think it is.
One thing is certain.....this could get interesting so stay tuned.

Mogwai