Froot Loops, Coco Puffs, Cheerios, and Lucky Charms: Breakfast of Champions (screw you Wheaties!)

Seriously, though, life sucks. Not in general, not this semester, not in the near future, now. Like this immediate moment. You know why? I just spent the equivalent of $5.25 on a bowl of cereal and juice, and it's barely even 9a. I've been wandering the student center alone for the past half hour, and I likely won't see anyone I know for at least another hour. So I won't have anyone to bitch to for another hour or so, and whenever I type "for" or "hour" my phone seems to think I'm trying to type "ems" or "gots." I need to figure out how to reprogram my predictive text.

Thu 05/08/2008 09.03 05082008512



EDIT: OK, I ate a cup of cream of wheat too.

Top four toys for me:

• PlayStation 3
• Sony Reader or Libré
• New Computer
• Some exotic PDA (Zaurus, odd high powered PocketPC, Newton, like that)

PlayStation 3
I don't want the thing for the games or the BluRay drive. Linux. I want it as a Linux machine. The PS3 has seven 3.2 GHz PowerPC cores (The Cell BE architecture has eight cores on die, but only seven are usable. This was done in order to increase die yield.). Linux is officially sanctioned by Sony, so this doesn't void any warrantees, nor does it require any hacking. I'd throw MythTV on there and use the additional cores as an auxiliary processing unit for my laptop. It's almost enough to make me want to mangasm.

Sony Reader/Sony Libré
The Libré is more of a fleeting fancy that I know I'll never have. The Sony Reader is an eInk display (looks similar to printed words, except it uses electronics to change the text on screen. It doesn't require power to keep a display on the screen, so it uses less power than LCD screens) with a system that can read PDFs and a few other non-Sony formats. This one would be real nice, but highly unlikely given how little Sony cares about Mac OS.

New Computer
When it takes 56 hours for me to convert a 2 hour video for use with my iPod, it's time to upgrade. And that's just pass one of a two-pass run! Pass one is the easy work. So we're talking more than 120 hours. 'Nuff said.

Exotic PDA
I suppose my PSP almost qualifies, but not quite. And a DS doesn't quite qualify either. It has to sync with existing software. WiFi isn't a must, but it would be nice. I'd love a keyboard. Storage is a lower priority. I have a 512 MB SD card, and I'm not planning anything too space consuming for my PDA (I can watch videos on my PSP with a 1 GB MSDuo, or on my iPod with a 60 GB disk, or on my laptop, and you can guess what options I have for audio...). It just has to be shiny and do lots of things.

There, whining done.

Everything Broke At Work. Or everything significant at least.

We have two real registers at work (I think there's a third virtual register somewhere). One is the primary register (Routes all credit card transactions, routes all data to/from gas pumps, contains all product information, prices, holds all settings, etc. It also manages pay-at-pump functions, pump control, and keeps a running journal of all pay-at-pump functinos) and the other one. The other one is where most of the business is done. The primary register's printer decided to fuck with me by skipping every other column of text. Think double spaced text, except between letters, not lines. About one line of normal text would now take up three. It's virtually unreadable. The rate it was consuming paper was simply unacceptable. To fix it, we would (accoridng to VeriFone) need to restart the primary register. This means we need to close down the entire store for more than fifteen minutes (Well, VeriFone says more than fifteen minutes). We spend so much time trying to shoo customers away from the register we're more than a half hour late trying to shut down the store. So, it's nine o'clock (an hour after closing) and we get the register restarted and fixed in six minutes. Over a half hour of trouble just for six minutes of work... They even tried to tell me that a dirty air intake vent at the power supply unit (a big black box that is outside of the unit, in this case about four feet away) can cause these kinds of printer troubles. My opinion of VeriFone has fallen a few thousand points.

Then the SuperMom's deliver guy jammed our front door closed. He pushed the already rather stubborn door over this metal lip that caps the tiles on the floor, where the store ends and "outside" beings. Trying to force the door open would only cause damage to the floor, since you can already see the tiles being ripped from their binding as you try to open it. At least it still locks.

The the peg that holds the (only remaining) door open on the donut display case broke. I tried to twist the screw to keep it from falling, next thing I know the peg has shot out straight out of it's shaft, and lands in front of me with a broken plastic screw in my hand.

Then, of course, the check machine decided to dick around with us by intermittently dying on us, refusing to connect to the service (It's dial-up, no less, so every time we need to wait for it to dial up, etc. etc.), and refusing to read checks (forcing us to manually enter the long MICR number). *smacks check machine with his pen a few times*

Work was not too happy today. We even had a drive off, got all the info, but no news yet.

I don't even know how I feel.

You know how when the phone rings, and it's on the other side of the house? You get up, go over to answer it, and just as you get in the room, someone else picks it up? I dunno, put that in the scale of life.

I'm feeling... I dunno. Ignored? Abandoned? Left behind? I can't even consider it. I both feel like chucking something at the wall, and just laying here all apathetic. Maybe it's because I'm tired, but I'm betting it's probably something else.

I hear about how all my friends are off doing something amazing that I end up hearing only stories about. Hearing about their significant others. Hearing about all sorts of interesting stories, about how happy they are. Then there's me, watching the kids, still off all alone, bored.

You'd think by now I'd be used to disappointment. I've had people tell me tons of things tons of times, yet only a small fraction has even seen it's way through. My dad said he'd get me something if I got all A's in 6th grade. Never happened. I lent $50 to a guy so he could go get an XBox, he promised to pay me back $60. Never happened. I've had friends apologize for something here or there, promise to make up for it, and got nothing. People saying they were going to do something for me, then never hearing of it again. Made plans, only to hear them go wrong when it's too late. Had people tell me things were one way on a certain topic only to find out through others that it's not. Promise to show me something, or tell me something, help with something, and never come back to it. And yet, I say nothing.

The most interesting thing I've done all week is go over to Chad's for a night. And we ended up playing Halo 2. Probably the only thing that made it entertaining was that I was so loaded up with sugar everything seemed nuts. Honestly, I make a conscious effort to try and not play Halo 2 with friends these days. It's gotten boring and old.

Friends of mine get their own cars. I have to borrow my mom's when she's at work. Families have bought their kids computers for school. I had to pay for half of mine. All except one of my friends have their own rooms, and all have had, at one point or another, their own room. I've always shared one. Numerous times, we've discussed plans on how to remodel parts of the house that would have been very likely to yield an extra bedroom, thus giving me some of my own private space. None of them ever went beyond speculation.

You'd think I'd be used to disappointment by now. Yet, even though everything I've expected to have happen hasn't, I still feel a little bad over it. Then I turn around at some point, and try to dismiss it, telling myself I shouldn't be selfish, all the time, going over it all in my head. Things I could say, but never would. Thinking too far into things.

I don't know what's wrong with me. I've been ending too many LJ's like that. And started off too many with me being in a good mood at the beginning of the day. At some point, something in me just snaps, after everyone's gone away, and I'm left to my thoughts.

I'm not sure if I should snap my laptop in half, or just lay here with my chin on this wadded up bit of blanket.

Sometimes I wonder if people even read this stuff. Do I just prattle on to such a point that people skim read it? Or are their LJ's just a place for them to write? Am I overlooked? Lost in a flood of other posts? Is it just me?

Sometimes I just feel so small. Like my accomplishments are nothing. I took State in Novice Debate. Whoop-de-doo. Compared to Worlds? I showed pretty well at the I.B. Art show. Where my exhibit was in the back, and was no where as interesting to look at as Pa Kou's, Alecia's, or even Rose's. And only a small fraction of the school population showed up, compared to friends of mine who did something their entire school noticed.

I ought to shut up now. It's all so depressing.

You know, when you've been cooped up without the opportunity to go out for more than 45 minutes and enjoy yourself (and even during those 45 minutes you have to satisfy someone's demands), and virtually no chance to do something different, you get bitchy. Especially late at night.

I ran out for coffee with my sister tonight, and spoke for a bit with m_geshmak. That's about all the major social interaction I've had all week. that is, unless you count the five minutes I too to say Hi to Nicky at the mall before going off and being told by Apple that I need to spend $300 to fix my laptop (right before I pretty much said FU to Apple's Warrantee). Been trying to see a friend for over a week now. I've spoken with her about two times, give or take, over the last week and a half. I won't be seeing her this week either. She already has plans.

Phil seems to understand what I'm going through, but at this time of night, with the Kaluah Mudslide Freeze in me, I'm not sure how to interpret his plans to make his own Machinima in the spirit of Red Vs. Blue. At this point at time, at this time of night, I don't know if I want to do it or not. Personally, I think it's going to flop like all of my other major artistic endeavors, so I'm not getting any high hopes for it except that it will either be pretty fun and go nowhere, or it'll be such a mess to put together that we'll just say "fuck it" and go back to shooting ourselves like we always do.

Yeah, the joy of it all is that my sister has earmarked tomorrow as her day to go out. She's been complaining that she's spent the last three days cooped up in the house. Last time I checked, I've spent far more than that cooped up in the house. I've been working Tues, Wed, and Today (Thurs), I work on Saturday. She went out Monday, and I had to fix my laptop on Wed. (I hoped to work on it from 3 (when I was supposed to get off of work) to 5 and have OS X reinstalling by 6, but instead I was working until 5, and put all my plans for that day in the crapper). I was also home last Sunday. Saturday before that, I think I was working. Before that, it's a blur. Now, it looks like the only day I'll have to get out is Sunday, and the plans I was hoping to have are already rejected. So, I'm going to have tomorrow evening (From 7 to either 9 or 10, knowing my friends) to hang out, as well as Sunday. I swear, they don't pay me enough at my job.

Honestly, working these day shifts is getting pretty fucking annoying. Wake up at 9, have about three and a half hours to putz around before going to work. Can't go out anywhere because there's the mess with the kids going to Packer Pad or Summer School and my mom has the car. Get home around 8:30-8:45p. Saturday is an almost guaranteed day of work now, but if I can be promised plans, I can always shift my hours to morning work.

I get paid less than starting wage, and I'm one of the most competent employees they have. We have two workers who are taking longer to learn the register than usual (It's better for the company if one of them never touches that register), one is pretty much lazy, gets the cushy work to do, gets paid asst. manager wages, and knows how to do less than half the things the rest of us need to know (plus she acts like she's more important than the rest of us when it comes to doing things she doesn't know how to do). There's another employee who also tends to pull stuff on us, like changing plans we have set down, such as using keys in the office to lock up (keys no one knows about other than the assistant manager on up) when it was planned that I come in to help them close up, and has even gone so far as to modify the schedule to take me off a day and take the hours for her own, without telling anyone (including me, and we're supposed to run all schedule changes by the manger or asst. manager). That's half the staff right there. They all get paid more than I do, and I've been working there for 14 months, which is longer than the existing manager or assistant manager (though I understand why the guy who got the asst. manager position got it, and have no complaints).

To top it off, the store is far too macromanaged, and any good ideas or suggestions get squelched because we refuse to spend any money. I suggest we replace the old metal propane sign that has literally fallen apart, that always fell over when the wind picked up, with a plastic one with wind holes, that I would be willing to make and get printed at Kinko's if they covered me for the expenses. I never heard a word back on them. We've only had a Check Verification device around for a couple months, after we accrued a "bad check" list that was growing weekly. We have no laser scanners or guns, all prices must be memorized. It also means all items that get stocked must have a price tag on them. We use gas pumps manufactured by a company that no longer exists, including two pumps that are at least 30 years old each. We don't have nearly enough security cameras, and we have no protection if we get held up. We have no authentic panic button.

Some simple modifications to improve things would be buy two or three new security cameras ($30 apiece), and get a pair of laser guns for the cash registers (Can't be more than $50 apiece). The security cameras will either reduce theft or reduce drive-offs (depending on where they are placed), and the laser guns will eliminate the need to price everything, thus ridding us of the cost of continually printing labels, as well as allow more detailed inventory and sales tracking, and price lists that are guaranteed to be correct and up to date (that means no cans of Dinty Moore sitting on the shelf marked $1.89 while all the new ones are marked $2.09).

But we don't spend money. So put the trouble of those things on the cashiers.

God damn I need to get out of the house. I don't want to hang around and play video games or tinker on my laptop. That's all I do, usually, when I'm trapped at home. Once I did something radical and tried to clean my room. That's about it. And it wears thin after a while. I just need to get out of this house and do something different for a while.

As far as my deep thoughts go for the day, I realized two things. First, I'm sort of a jack-of-all-trades when it comes to my friends. I can get along well with a variety of different people, and even learn to enjoy some of their favorite things. Go look at me, my sister, m_geshmak, sariel_t, and Monty for example. m_geshmak listens to international dance, foreign stuff. sariel_t is more into rock than m_geshmak. My sister is hard core classics. Monty is... Well, mostly Pink Floyd, but has a number of stupid and silly songs. And I can sit and listen and enjoy all of them (except for some of Monty's Cow songs... those scar my mind). Yet, if you were to put m_geshmak and my sister in the car, I promise there would be a fight to the death over what we listen to. Mordie would want TurboFolk (East european folk songs put to dance or techno beat/background music) and my sister would prefer Sublime, or some kind of older rock. Yet I can listen to and enjoy both.

The second thing I realized is something I'm probably not going to mention, out of some shred of remaining modesty (no, nothing sexual or private, but modesty as in "I'm not going to toot my own horn here").

Anyway, I should go to bed now so I can wake up tomorrow, hurl myself against the walls, then go on LJ and bitch about it some more. You know, I wonder what the freezer life is on certain foods.

Well, I guess my plans weren't on today. I figured that out a few hours after I helped Bernard lug that hefty PowerMac of his into his parents' car. Staring at the red "Away" marking while discussing T-Mobile's text messaging fees for non-Pay-go customers (Turns out if you're not pay-go, you have to pay for incoming SMS).

This morning, I started out in a bit of a funk, not feeling that great. I got better, further into the day. I actually made dinner right tonight. Then it was the same boat I started from in the morning.

In the time I was supposed to be out of the house, I have had two mostly worthwhile conversations, one meaningless yet mildly entertaining one, and inserted something like five or six new sigs into my Mail Signature Settings. Whoo. What an exciting night.

My sister made an interesting comment this morning. Monty had just called and wanted to come over for a bit. Just after that, my sister's friends called and asked if she could go out with them. I told her I had no problems if she went out. She said to me that I'm far nicer than she is, since she wouldn't let me pull the kind of thing she was. In my mind, she wasn't pulling any kind of stunt. We could have worked out plans out fine with no problems at all. Still, though, do I let people get away with stuff they wouldn't let me do? Makes you wonder about the perspective of it all.

I mean, I'm the kind of guy who holds out until the last minute. And usually by then, I'm fucked if thing fail. My sister might abandon things the moment they seem to go wrong. Or not.

Maybe I should shut up now. I probably shouldn't be bitching tonight anyway. Hard to describe how I'm feeling tonight. Partly depressed, partly angry.

You know, I'm trying to avoid turning LJ into my personal bitching blog, but tonight I have to indulge.

The day started off well enough. I got to borrow my mom's Echo, and I managed to fill the tank with less than $20 for her (even at these prices! $19.56 fills the tank). I came home and decided to update FFXI. Of course SquareEnix's net admins are a bunch of dumbasses who never heard of server mirroring, so they have a million American/Japanese PC/PS2 players mobbing their one lone file server, trying to grab both the updates for the PlayOnline Viewer and the ginormo update for FFXI. I started at about 9a, and it wasn't until around 7p that I managed to get a lasting connection to SE for the FFXI update. The update started the timer at 2 hours (over broadband?!) and now it's up to 10+ hrs. And my laptop is routing all the traffic. Joy.

But I didn't let that get to me. I was suppressing the urge to send a mail bomb to SE.

I was surprisingly upbeat for a day when I had to stay home and watch the kids while my sister went out. Maybe it was the fact that I found out I worked on Thursday and not Wednesday that helped.

Well, around 7:30, I get a call from who of all people, but Melody (melodyriddle)! She's in town! Well, I'm surprised and ecstatic enough to have her come over so I can see her. And I do. Next thing I know, I've told her Monty is at home and we can more than likely go see him. You know, the more the merrier. Then we invite sariel_t to the party, where she somehow managed to convince her parents to let her go out tonight. So, she shows up.

And at first, things are great. Then she and Mel start talking, and slowly, I'm forgotten.

I find it odd that whenever there are more than two of my good friends around, somehow, someone ends up going out with someone else (or something to that effect). Friends I've known longer than they know each other. It's just weird.

So, next thing I know, I'm totally forgotten, and I end up saying a few sentences to Mel's friend here and there, but she's interested in hearing the stories about Mel's friends that she's just meeting. I don't blame her. That's why she's here. So I end up being an oversized, overeducated stick rack.

After a while, I just start to walk off. The only one who notices is Monty. He's also the only one who tries to drag me back (literally) to the group. Except I'm so totally depressed and bored that I don't want to. They're all enjoying themselves, and I'm ignored. I'm sorry, but that's happened before, and if I can avoid it without being too rude, I will. In retrospect, I guess the way I did leave was rude, and I didn't mean it to be. I guess I might as well apologize for that when I speak to them all, but seriously, I just didn't feel like being there any more.

It's not that I need to be the center of attention, but I like to at least be included or aware of what's going on in the conversation. I don't feel like sitting around while two of my friends sit in each other's arms, talking about things and people that I'm probably never going to know about. I don't want to be a fifth wheel.

I've had things along this line of events happen to me, and I always end up being ignored, and end up finding some way to keep myself from losing it (I now know how my austistic brother feels). Sometimes it's awkward, sometimes I see it coming. Of course, even though I have the foresight, I never try to get out while the getting's good. I guess it's some level of stupidity or masochism where I just keep ending up getting the 'ol self-esteem balloon squashed under the tires of an H2 peeling out. This is the first time I've ever walked out like that. Of course, I waited until it was too late. Maybe there's something wrong with me.

I swear, someone up there must love taunting me. I don't believe in Karma any more. "It's going to be my X month anniversary soon" and other stories are what I hear. What do I say? "Yeah, I'm trying to build my own PVR," and after that I answer their quizzical look with "Think TiVo." I have nothing more interesting to talk about. I have old stories about things I did with friends. I don't get to talk about someone I just met.

As a man, I find it hard to not put things in sexual context or relate it to sex. It's biological. But, I do my best to keep it in the background, and ignore it in conversation or situations where it's totally inappropriate. But, unfortunately, tonight I think perhaps I should have just shut my brain off.

Still, I find it odd that I seem to be surrounded by friends who have (or are, for all I know) at some point dated each other, or became interested in doing such.

I dunno, maybe I should be dreading this Saturday.

But it leaves me wondering, how the hell do they do it? How the hell do these people hit it off in less than a few seconds? I know plenty of girls. At one point, last year (2003-2004 school year) during lunch (or was it the year before that?) I was given the honorary title of "one of the girls." Yet I've never gone out with one. I am (with an exception where it is, apparently, a "Was," yet she has yet to say a thing to my face about it) good friends with them. So it's clear I get along with girls just fine. I don't repulse them. Hell, I've even helped them out in times of need where they needed support. Yet, I am a (so far) live long bachelor. I have never had a girlfriend in my 19 years of life.

Now, not to say that these girls I know should be dating me. Far from it. A good friend once told me, from experience, to never date friends. And it's a rule I've tried hard to keep. I'm not so stupid to think that the "let's just be friends" talk means that you go back to being friends. Or at least it's not that way most of the time.

But I'm honestly stupified. Anyway, I'm glad my friends are having a good time tonight. I'm just going to crawl back into my hole and wait the ten hours for these measly 257 files (out of 1,300 something) to download and install over the "unknown" remaining time and the POL-1160 errors, and go back to managing my IRC network, before finding some movie on TV and going to bed.