Peak 2021

 This year's Peak season was...interesting. I can't say if it was better or worse than last year's, because they all suck.

One thing that was done differently this year was that instead of having a full night shift crew running the Pick Rings and master carton conveyors, they just had some people picking various kinds of master carton pallets, and they needed some QAs to audit the PTPs (pick to pallet). The night shift started on the week of October 10th. I worked night shift that week to train the two QAs who were going to be on that shift. I have the knowledge, but I do not have the people skills to train people properly. These two people were dumb as rocks, and not good listeners. They were also husband and wife. I was so underwhelmed by their progress at the end of the week that I did not feel comfortable leaving them alone, but I had to go back to A-Shift the following week. I kept track of their work while I was on A-Shift, and was appalled at how much stuff they fucked up.

On one of my days off during the first week of November, my boss texted me saying that they needed an experienced QA on night shift, and asked if I could do it. I said, "Sure!" I knew that they needed someone there to keep an eye on the two knuckleheads, as well as deal with stuff that's beyond their area of expertise. I had been looking forward to having my birthday off that week, but I was now going to have to work it, but figured it would be alright as long as I got to celebrate that weekend. Anyway, these people forgot just about everything I taught them, including stuff that I wrote down for them. I'm not even sure what they did with the notes. I found out sometime that Wednesday that we were supposed to work overtime that Friday night. I ultimately decided that, hey, they've got these two people, I'll just call in Friday night. On the morning of my birthday, my boss texted me to tell me that the knuckleheads' assignment ended, so I was going to be alone on night shift. I didn't have a problem not working with the knuckleheads, but I wasn't thrilled about having to rearrange plans for that weekend. We had jack shit to do on the night of my birthday. I asked one of the supervisors if OT was still on for Friday, and he said it was canceled. I was more than happy to have Friday off, but pissed because I had rearranged plans to accommodate for it.

There were three people left on A-Shift, two guys that I liked, and one guy that I can't stand, I'll just refer to him as Dingleberry. We ended up losing the two guys that I liked on the week of my birthday. One guy quit before the week started, the other guy...died at the end of the week. I was really heartbroken about that guy dying, I had worked with him for a good chunk of the past three years, and he was one of my favorite people there. We were both grumpy old men (he was around 60), and I enjoyed talking to him about all the morons that worked there. I tend to get to work about 45 minutes to an hour early, and this guy was almost always there before me! It's weird not seeing his truck or SUV there when I come in.

I feel compelled to tell the whole story of the Saturday and Sunday of my birthday weekend. That Saturday afternoon, I went to meet up with a friend at a coffee shop, and was looking forward to having that entire Saturday and Sunday morning ahead of me. When I got to the coffee shop, I saw a text from my boss saying they needed me back on A-Shift because our guy had a heart attack while at work, and that it wasn't looking too good, and said I could start on either Sunday or Monday morning due to the short notice. I chose Monday morning. Two hours later, boss texted me to let me know that he died. I ended up sleeping Saturday night, and got up on Sunday morning looking forward to having all of Sunday ahead of me. Just after 10:00 a.m., the A-Shift Outbound manager texts me asking if I can call him, so I called him. He said that he still needed someone to do PTP audits on nights and that he was going to talk to my boss about it, and asked if I could come in that night. I was like, "Sure." So much for having all of Sunday ahead of me. I was actually about ready for a nap around the time that he called, and I had no problem going to bed at noon. The problem was that I could only sleep about two or three hours at best, so I was kind of tired and cranky when I came in.

I got to have the Wednesday night before Thanksgiving off. I would've rather worked Wednesday night and had Thanksgiving night off, but I understand that Thanksgiving night leads into Black Friday, and I guess they have to start getting their Black Friday shit out as early as possible.

During that first week that I was on night shift in November, I managed to miss out on a meeting they had which was about their plans for the weeks of Thanksgiving/Black Friday and Cyber Monday. The knuckleheads told me that they would be running the entire conveyors, meaning the master cartons and Pick Rings, which I knew was going to be a nightmare. I asked the guy who was managing night shift about it, and he said they were just going to run this one particular area that doesn't affect me a whole lot, so I was relieved. But that turned out to be a lie, they did run master cartons and the Pick Rings for most of those two weeks, and it was a nightmare. But by the end of the Cyber Monday week, they let most of the people go.

The next week was supposed to be my last week on night shift, it would technically end at the end of the shift on the morning of Friday the 10th. The 11th was A-Shift's Saturday to work, and my boss wanted me to come in that morning. That would barely leave me with 24 hours between the end of one shift and the start of another. I called in that Thursday night so I could have 48 hours to transition back to day shift. We ended up having historically bad weather on the night of the 10th and morning of the 11th. I slept like shit due to my phone waking me up to tornado warnings, but due to having to work, I was like, fuck it, I'm staying in bed, if the building collapses on me, it collapses on me. We lost power for about two hours, and that really didn't help me sleep, either. I was supposed to be at work at 6:00 a.m., but while the worst of the storms might have been over by that time, it was still supposed to rain pretty hard, and things in general just sounded like a mess, so I called in saying I'd come in at 10:00. When I came in, fucking nothing was working right. There wasn't even any internet for the first twenty minutes that I was there. Things were working slightly better on Sunday, but it was a nightmare. Hell, that whole week was a nightmare, I guess it was like the last big push to get stuff into stores before Christmas, especially to Latin America. For those few weeks that I was on night shift, they had B-Shift come in on their weekends to fill the void left by the two guys they lost, and they hired a new girl for A-Shift before I came back. Even though we were still short one person this week, the boss decided not to have anyone from B-Shift come in since I was back. I trained a new girl on Monday. She said she would be back on Tuesday, but she wasn't. And our woman who works Monday through Friday called in on Tuesday, that really sucked. I was really glad for that week to be over.

As expected, we get Christmas Day off, which I'm doubly glad for since it lands on a Saturday that A-Shift would have to work. I haven't heard anything about New Year's weekend yet.

Mo' money, mo' problems, my ass!

This September has not been my month! I just went through a hellish week of dealing with banks and credit unions. I'll start this story by saying that I just refinanced my car, and my first payment on this new loan was this month. The credit union that I got the loan from (referred to from here on out as "The Lender") included a Savings account to go with my loan. I doubt that I'll be able to add anything to it, since I need every bit of money I get. I got a decent check on the 10th, most of which was going to go to the car payment, most of my bills, and groceries. I was not aware that The Lender was going to automatically take the amount of my car payment out of my bank's checking account (referred to here on out as The Bank) every month, in fact, their welcome letter mentions how to set up loan payments. So, I made a car payment on the 11th.

Right after I woke up on Thursday the 16th, my first day off since the previous Saturday, I checked my bank account to see how much I had. Instead of seeing a few hundred dollars, I saw -$137, $36 of which was overdraft fee. As I said earlier, I didn't know that The Lender was taking it out every month, so I ended up making my car payment twice. I called The Lender to see about having one of my payments refunded, and they said they'd do it. I checked my bank account frequently that Thursday and Friday to see if it transferred. I called The Lender late Friday afternoon to see if there was any progress on the transfer, and they said that it was transferred. The problem was that they transferred it to The Lender's Savings account instead of The Bank's Checking account, where I actually fucking needed it. I don't know why they couldn't transfer it from the Savings account to my proper Bank account, because you'd think that if they can take it out, they can surely fucking put it back in! What I ended up having to do was add my bank account as an External Account that I could transfer money to, but I couldn't immediately start transferring money to it, it had to be verified first. They did this by sending a couple of micro-transactions to the account, and once they posted, I had to confirm each amount to verify it. The micro-transactions hadn't posted by Saturday morning, so I borrowed $200 from a friend to get my bank account back in the positive.

The micro-transactions posted on Monday, but I couldn't verify them until I got off from work because The Lender's mobile banking app didn't have the option of verifying it, and their website didn't seem to work on Safari. I probably could've done it on my computer in the warehouse, but I was afraid that either The Bank or The Lender's web sites would want to text me a verification number so I could sign on from those devices, and I'm not privileged enough to be able to take my phone to the warehouse floor. Oh, and I don't typically get off from work until 6:30. All this wouldn't have been a problem had my automatic car insurance payment not posted that same day, putting my bank account back in the negative along with adding another $36 overdraft fee to my account. By the time I was able to get home and verify the micro-transactions, it was too late to schedule the transfer of funds for that day, so the transfer was scheduled for the next day. Thankfully, the transfer was posted by Wednesday morning, letting me breathe a sigh of relief. I then messaged The Bank on Thursday morning to see if they could refund me the $72 of overdraft fees, seeing as that it wasn't my fault that The Lender refunded the wrong account, and that I had to wait all god damned weekend for the micro-transactions to post so I could transfer the refund to them. I was afraid that I'd have to give them more bad publicity on social media if they didn't refund me, but lo and behold they did it! More relief! As for the friend that I owed $200 to, I paid her back when I got paid that Friday morning.

You know, I've always though that The Notorious B.I.G. was full of shit when he said, "Mo' money, mo' problems!" I prefer Al Jourgensen's take via Surgical Meth Machine, "I want Rich People Problems!"

It kinda sucks that for the majority of jobs out there, you don't get to see your hours of labor translate to cash at the very end of the day, or even that week. Some jobs you can, but that's some real under-the-table stuff that I'm not sure I'd want to deal with. If you're lucky, you'll get it towards the end of the following week. But a lot of us poor bastards get paid bi-weekly, so we have to wait two weeks to get the money from that first week. Take for example, the fucking Labor Day that I had to work. Labor Day was on September 6th, and I got paid on Friday of that week, but that pay was for the work I did the previous two weeks, not that week. I didn't see the hours that I worked on Labor Day translate to money until this past Friday, the 24th. That's two weeks and five days, just two days shy of a whole three weeks! And then there are people who get paid monthly. I'm sure it's fine if you bring home about 3 or $4,000 a month, but any less than that would suck.

The Labor Day that wasn't

 I'm still working at the shithole. I ended up working on Labor Day, the first Labor Day I remember working in years, but it didn't surprise me. What did surprise me was that we worked all god damned day, all twelve hours! And this was after having B-Shift come in for overtime on Saturday along with my shift, who was scheduled to work Saturday as a regular day. The only reason I can think of for them having overtime that weekend and working all day Labor Day was because one of our clients is dealing with a product recall, but that client has nothing to do with a lot of us. My company should've just said, "Fuck the customers, it's Labor Day!" And of course, most of the people who haven't had to work the previous two holidays (all of B-Shift, the QA woman who works Monday through Friday, my supervisor, 2nd Shift Shipping, Inbound, and the warehouse manager) didn't have to work. Also, I ended up working that Wednesday due to B-Shift QA still being short staffed. That was the worst Labor Day and Labor Day weekend ever, and I've had some real doozies! Hell, all that working Labor Day really did was make it easier for B-Shift when they came in on Wednesday morning. I was there, they had fuck all to do.

Hypothetically, A-Shift should be getting Thanksgiving off, but I'm sure they'll find some way to screw us.

This overtime has made for decent checks. It helps that they recently started paying us an extra $2 an hour, which I'm pretty sure is just going to last through the Peak season. But it really pisses me off that I have to work all these extra hours just to be able to pay the rent/bills and have some money left over for groceries with no outside help. I have quite a few friends who surely aren't rich, but can still afford to go to plenty of concerts, festivals, conventions, or even go on vacations. Like, I don't need to be rich, I just want to make enough to go to all those places.

As if having to come in and end up working twelve hours on Labor Day wasn't bad enough, my Labor Day started with the news that my absolute favorite coffee shop would be closing for good the following Thursday. I was already angry, then I was heartbroken. It's not it like it was the only coffee shop I go to, but it had a really good vibe to it, and had the best frozen blended coffee drinks I've ever had, even better than Starbucks' Frappuccino. They basically said that the place couldn't survive another Covid Winter. They did have some indoor seating these past couple of months, but it was severely limited compared to normal times, so you couldn't have tons of people hanging out inside during the Winter. I figure that not having a drive-through, or the ability to even have a drive-through, probably hurt them more than most coffee shops. Rents in the Highlands being sky high probably hasn't helped, either.

I finally got to visit the coffee shop on Thursday morning. The line was pretty ridiculous, but I was determined to stick with it. I got my favorite drink, took a lot of pictures, and even got to sit and soak it all in for a little while. I really didn't want to go to my mom and dad's to do laundry afterward, but with my weekend being compressed into one day shorter than it should've been, I figured it was the best day to do it. My parents watch a lot of news, mostly local, possibly anywhere from four to seven hours worth, depending on how early or late they get up in the morning. I stuck around for dinner, and they typically watch the news during dinner. They had a segment about the coffee shop closing, and I thought, "Maybe, just maybe, Dad won't say something stupid." Sure enough, he did, saying, "Well you can thank the n-----s." I told him, "Bullshit, it was Covid!" Then I went into the number of ways that Covid could've affected this particular coffee shop compared to other coffee shops. Then he said, "What about the crime?", and I said, "I don't know!" I should've straight up told him that crime had nothing to do with their closing. But he's a fucking idiot, and never believes the truth. Crime is up in Louisville compared to years past, but as someone who actually goes out into the city, I still find it reasonably safe most of the time. I don't think this is a problem exclusive to Louisville, but typical of the small town/rural-city divide, but people from outside the city seem to think that the city is like Mad Max, or to reference a more obscure movie, Death Wish 3, where the amount of crime and the amount of firepower used to fight that crime is utterly comical. I ended up going to the Highlands that Friday evening, even taking a lengthy walk from around Longest Avenue to Morton Avenue. It was pretty busy out, especially for the Covid era, and what I saw was all different kinds of people out trying to enjoy life.

A friend of mine recently said that racists must be profoundly fucking stupid. I told him that as the son of a racist, I can confirm that they are indeed profoundly fucking stupid. I don't see how someone can hate or find themselves superior to an entire race of people, other than stupidity, especially when you see the particular people who think they're the superior race, like my dad. What's odd to me is that while my dad seems to hate Black people indiscriminately, he seems to tolerate the Black guy who works for his brother's lawn care company just fine.

A working class hero is something to be!

July 4th fell on a Sunday this year, so my employer technically observed Independence Day on the 5th, meaning that they had nothing scheduled to ship out on the 5th, and those departments that typically work Monday through Friday got the day off. I would've been fine having Sunday off and working Monday. Despite this, they still fucking scheduled us to work on the 4th and 5th! This made no sense, especially since we were miserably slow the week before, and ended up being miserably slow the week of the 4th. We only worked half the day on the 4th, 4 to 5 hours on the 5th, and even got to leave an hour and a half early on the 6th. Hell, we could have had Sunday off, and still probably gotten off an hour or two early on Monday. It really wasn't the worst 4th of July ever or anything, but I was really hoping we'd get that Sunday off so I could actually go out and do something the Saturday night before the 4th. My Saturday nights have been nonexistent since I came back to work, it would've been nice if they could've thrown us a bone.

I found out that it was the warehouse manager's idea to have us work both that Sunday and Monday. It's possible that he might have been pressured by our client, but it was his decision. And guess what? That asshole didn't come in either of those days!

We've been horribly busy since the week after Independence Day. It's not that they have shipments spread out evenly over the entire week, but they seem to concentrate everything on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. They especially like to fuck us on Tuesdays. A lot of time, we'll spend Sunday and Monday working on Tuesday's stuff, then just when we think we're out of the woods, they'll drop another 1,000 to 2,000 picks for Tuesday on us either late on Monday or early Tuesday.

I really, really hate what they've had me doing since I came back, which is doing "dock audits". That's where I have to audit pallets of stuff to make sure that nothing's damaged, they're wrapped up right, etc., before they leave the warehouse. This is sometimes interrupted by having to take pictures of some customers' truck loads before they leave the building. I usually know what's supposed to ship out that day. Where I run into problems is when they decide to mix in stuff that's supposed to go out the next day, or even the day after that, onto a truck that's going out  that day. It will cause me to miss out on auditing some of that day's stuff because I'm running around trying to audit tomorrow's stuff that's getting ready to go out. I hope that wasn't too confusing, but that's about the best way I can describe it. I don't know about the woman on B-Shift who is the Dock Audits expert, but there's no way that I or most people can do all this shit all by ourselves.

I don't know how the Hell the temp agencies decide who they think is QA (Quality Assurance) material. I actually had a little experience doing quality audits before I got this job, but I don't think you necessarily need QA experience. What's more important is to be somewhat adequate with computers, and what they end up giving us is a lot of computer illiterate people! I was told about one person in particular that they had trained while I was on leave that, three weeks into the job, still didn't know how to properly press CTRL+ALT+DELETE to unlock the computer.

I had a significant amount of money saved up when I started my apartment search back in April. It shocked me how fast I blazed through it after moving out. I didn't think it would happen this soon, but I had to ask my mom for some grocery money this week. I definitely have to keep a better eye on spending. I've also applied for refinancing my auto loan, I currently pay almost $400 a month!

It's a little too close to the Peak season for my comfort. I would like to find another job before September, when the Blackout period (where we can't take any time off) starts, but I'm kind of afraid to since I can't afford COBRA insurance without subsidies. The U.S. health insurance system is bullshit. The money from the extra hours, and in the case of last year extra pay per hour, from Peak is nice, but it would be nice to be able to have a life during September through December. It would especially be nice to be able to go to the Louder Than Life festival, but even if I could go, I doubt that I'll even have the money to do it right.

2021: Worst Memorial Day Ever (So Far)

God damn, my employer just keeps getting worse and worse when it comes to holidays.

While I was off from work, they finally split B-shift into it's own separate 12-hour shift like originally planned. Reminder: They were Wednesday through Thursday, A-shift was Sunday through Wednesday, both working 6:00 a.m. to 6:30 p.m., and they'd take turns working eight hours on Saturdays. I chose A-shift when I came back, so I worked that Monday and Tuesday, then came back that Saturday. I didn't realize until late in the week that the following Monday was Memorial Day, and they had nothing scheduled to ship out on Memorial Day. I figured that since the warehouse was now running seven days a week, that there would be no good reason to have us work Monday, and if they did, then hopefully it wouldn't be more than a half day. We started Tuesday's work on Saturday. We knocked out a lot of Tuesday's work and started on Wednesday's work on Sunday, but they still had us come in on Memorial Day. I think a lot of what they did on Memorial Day was Wednesday's work, and by coming in on Memorial Day, we just basically made it easier for B-shift when they come in on Wednesday morning than it needed to be. I was hoping we'd get to leave significantly early on Memorial Day, but we ended up working ten fucking hours! That's longer than the normal shifts we were working just over two months ago. If we had gotten off earlier, then I would've stopped by mom and dad's for a while, but since we got off late, I was too tired and pissed off to come over. Instead, I just went home, ordered some Domino's, and watched Death Wish 3, fulfilling my holiday Eighties/Nineties movie quota*. We finished up Tuesday's work by 5:00 p.m. Tuesday. I just fucked off for an hour, then they started sending some of Wednesday's work down the line between 6:00 and 6:15. I could've done some work in the 5:00 hour, but decided to leave it for B-shift in the morning, because those motherfuckers had a whole four days off.

If I had known that I was gonna get fucked out of Memorial Day, then I would've extended my leave of absence to June 1st!

July 4th lands on a Sunday this year. I'm no longer confident that they'll even give us half the day off, but at least A-shift isn't scheduled to work the day before.

Spectrum/Apple TV update: I mentioned last time that I got a suitable replacement remote for my Apple TV. It works pretty well, but for some reason it's nearly impossible to rewind shows recorded from Spectrum with it. The only way to rewind on Spectrum is to use Siri on the original remote to tell it to rewind. I have no problem rewinding with the new remote on the various streaming sites. I've come to peace with not being able to pause, fast forward, or rewind live tv on Spectrum, mainly because I rarely watch live tv anyway.

I've been watching MeTV on Dish Network for two years, so we got access to all the shows. MeTV on Spectrum is through a local affiliate. While I don't actually watch Toon In With Me or Hogan's Heroes, it upsets me that the affiliate preempts those shows for local news.

*I have a tradition of watching movies from the Eighties or Nineties on most holidays, which comes from having spent a lot of holidays after we got a VCR for Christmas in 1984 renting and watching movies.

Apartment hunting sucks, Part 2

 I found a decent little 2-bedroom apartment in the middle of Week 3 of my time off. I signed the lease the following Tuesday, and moved in the next day. I knew there was no way that I'd get this place even halfway situated by the following Monday when I was supposed to return to work, so I extended my leave an extra week. This place is a little further out from my favorite parts of Louisville than I care for, even more so than my last apartment, but it is closer than where I had been the past two years, and pretty much worth it just to have my own place with an extra room or two for storage. One nice thing about living where I live now is that I can get to a Walmart, Kroger, and even a Meijer store in less time than it took me to get to the Walmart or Kroger in Shepherdsville from my mom and dad's place, granted, the Walmart out here is one of the worst ones I've been to in the greater Louisville and surrounding areas.

Trying to get internet and TV was a pain in the ass, I won't go into all the details. Long story short, it took an entire week from the time I ordered it to the time everything was up and running. I was originally planning on getting a Spectrum DVR, and then a Roku for my streaming stuff, but I ended up going with Spectrum with Apple TV, so I can watch Spectrum programming as well as Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, and HBO Max on the same device. But there are a couple of huge issues I have with streaming Spectrum as an app on Apple TV. The first is that while you can record shows using Cloud DVR, you can't pause, rewind, or fast forward live tv. Another is that if I want to set a recording for something that's a few days away, I don't have the option (as far as I know) of pushing a button that jumps ahead 24 hours like I can with Dish Network, or that I remember being able to do with a Spectrum DVR box, I have to keep pushing a button through every program between now and the one I want to record. Also, the Apple TV remote sucks, but I've found a suitable replacement for it.

I return to work tomorrow. I haven't missed it at all. I've especially not missed being in a big damn hurry all the time.

I went to two visitations this past week. One was for a friend who was in her mid-60s, the other was for a friend's husband who was just over ten years younger than me. My friend's death has me thinking even more about the passing of time than I already did. I met her in 2004, seventeen years ago. When I met her, I was 27, she was 49. Now, I'm closer to the age she was when I met her than I am to the age I was when I met her. 2004 does not seem like that damn long ago. It doesn't seem fair that we get so much older in such a short amount of time. As for my younger friend's husband, I never actually met him, but my heart breaks for his wife and their young daughter. I mainly went because I really missed her, and wanted to give my condolences in person. I miss all my friends. I've been missing most of them since even before the pandemic. It was nice seeing one of my friends at both visitations, though I had to leave soon after he got to the one of them.

Apartment hunting sucks

I'm happy to say that I'm fully vaccinated. I still feel like a mass reopening of places is still a ways off though.

At work, they ended up only changing one shift, Group A, to 12-hour days. Group B is still currently working 8-hour days, Monday through Friday, but they still have to work every other Saturday. I was supposed to be in Group A, but ended up getting drafted into Group B. I was like, "Well, guess I'll have to postpone the apartment search for another month." Group B really got the shit end of the stick, because they have to work about 88 hours in a two week period, whereas Group A only has to work 80.

So, my dad and I really got into it a few weeks ago, and he wants me out of the house. He doesn't realize that I want to be out of there even more than he wants me out, I just haven't had the time or energy to look for an apartment, nor to even pack. My psychiatrist said he'd help me with FMLA paperwork if I needed to take time off, so I'm taking a few weeks off in hopes of finding a place, packing, moving, and unpacking. Here's how I was hoping it would go.

• Week 1: Find a place, start packing.
• Week 2: Continue packing, move stuff into new place.
• Weeks 3 and 4: Unpack and organize everything, and make the place a home.

This apartment search has been an even bigger pain in the ass than it was in 2015. That first weekend I was off, I made a lengthy list of places I wanted to check out. I contacted most of them that Monday, pretty much all of them had nothing available. I did hear from one person two days later who had a place that was on Craigslist. They asked me what time I could check the apartment out, and I told them. Then they told me that I was scheduled for 9:00am Thursday, because they were all booked up for that day. I get there, and the building number for the place I was looking for didn't exist. They either lied, or they fucked up and put the wrong number when they were making the ad for Craigslist. I texted them back to tell them that the number doesn't exist, and asked if they meant one number or another number. I never did hear back from them. I'm not dealing with Craigslist again.

I looked at a couple of places that had potential. A Facebook friend has offered me a floor of her house if all else fails.

I'm pissed off at Facebook because they've started limiting the amount of times I can react to posts, supposedly to "help protect the community from spam." I could still comment on posts, and I could react to others' comments on posts, I just couldn't react to the posts themselves. I was blocked from reacting for three and a half days, then noticed around 11:45 this morning that I could react again. I was blocked again four hours later, but then I seemed to be reinstated about an hour after that. This is fuckin' bullshit.

I ended up owing Federal and State taxes this year. It supposedly has to do with some changes to W4's last year, along with Kentucky's equivalent of the W4, the K4. And thanks to getting paid $4 more an hour during Peak, I made about $10K more than I did the year before, putting me in a new tax bracket. Thankfully, I owed less than $200 for both Federal and State, so the upside of making that much more money was that I didn't have any problem paying it. I've modified my W4 and K4 to where I'm getting a little more taken out of my check. I'm trying to get it to where I don't owe any, but don't get a huge refund, either. But anyway, I paid more in taxes this year than a lot of companies did!

Shift change postponed

Listening to The Moody Blues, "Days Of Future Passed". 

As soon as temperatures started warming up significantly and the snow started melting, we got tons of rain. All this water has led to flooding. Boo.

I mentioned in "Fuck Winter 2021" that we were switching to 12-hour shifts. I said we were starting on March 8th, but it was actually supposed to start on the 7th, this Sunday. Well, on March 1st they decided to postpone the shift change to, if I remember correctly, April 8th, because they don't have enough people to pull off the shift switch. We're short about sixty people, to be exact, so they're hoping to hire that many people in the next month. The reason for the shift change is because our client wants the warehouse running seven days a week. (Pardon the interruption, now listening to Neil Young, "Freedom".)  So until April 8th, we'll be working 8-hour days, but we'll be working Monday through Saturday. I managed to get out of working today, but I'll have to work at least two of the next three Saturdays.

One of my crew said she didn't want to do QA anymore. It's too much responsibility for too little pay. Hell, I don't want to, either. I tried to get out of it a year ago, but then we started losing people, so I wasn't going anywhere. The only way I'm getting out of QA is if I find another job.

February 22nd was the anniversary of the last event I went to before Covid really hit. It was about a year ago when the cancellation of the South By Southwest (SXSW) festival was announced. I think we're still a good ways away from something resembling normalcy, but we seem to be on the right track. I'm eagerly awaiting getting a vaccine. I'm in Group 1C for the vaccine, but right now they're only doing 1C ages 60 and over.

I still collect CDs, but my main criteria for buying an album is, "Is this something I'll actually want to listen to in the car?", since that's where I do most of my music listening. But as CDs become scarcer, there's also the question, "When will I see this album, or even this edition, ever again?" I went out today and ended up buying a ton of CDs. The two albums I'm listening to while typing this were a couple of them. There were at least a couple of real "Holy crap!" finds, one was the limited two-disc edition of Soundgarden's "Badmotorfinger" that included the bonus "SOMMS" EP, the other was the 2000 re-release of Danzig's "Blackacidevil" with different artwork and bonus tracks, which was in a secure case and that they were selling for $30. I also found a DEVO anthology that I didn't know existed. I had went to another store earlier in hopes of finding DEVO's first album, having seen a friend share this store's post on Facebook a few weeks ago showing their new arrivals, which included that album. Alas, it was not there, so I was extremely happy when I went to the second store and found that anthology. I found discs 2 and 3 of David Bowie's "Sound + Vision" box set at the first store. I remember seeing that box when it came out, and it just looked amazing. I was tempted to buy those two discs, but decided I'd rather just buy the whole box if I get the chance. If I can't find it, then oh well.

I may post about my recent adventures in music collecting, especially in regards to recovering from the Loudness War, sometime soon.

Fuck Winter 2021, Part 2

 As I mentioned in my previous entry, we were supposed to get shitty weather, namely snow, a couple of times this week. I stayed home Monday and Tuesday, did some shoveling on Tuesday, so I'd have less to shovel later in the week. I went in to work on Wednesday, it actually wasn't too terrible, it probably didn't hurt that the person who pissed me off so bad the week before wasn't there. It snowed again Wednesday night and Thursday morning. It was supposed to snow some through Friday morning, but I don't think it did more than flurry, if even that much, after Thursday morning. I stayed home Thursday and Friday to do some shoveling. I think the official high temperature for Louisville on Friday was 32 degrees, but according to my house's thermometer it got as high as 37. I really hope we don't end up having another major snow event this season, but around here it's possible to get snow even in May.

I watched the tv cut of Mallrats from my 2-disc Arrow Video Blu-Ray. I was reading in the liner notes about how Mallrats was done from a 4K transfer. Between reading that, and thinking about the video I saw on Scream Factory's Sleepaway Camp Blu-Ray about how they transfer film to video, I got to thinking that transferring film to video seems like it would be a cool job, especially since preserving history, whether it be film or music, is an interest of mine. But, how do I get into that line of work?

I just found out tonight that another friend has passed away. Well, really an acquaintance, someone I knew from the good old days of Louisville Mojo. I probably hadn't seen him in at least a decade, and he moved to Florida a few years ago. He hadn't really posted much on Facebook in a few years, but we were still connected on there. Even though I didn’t know him as well as some of my friends, his passing still hurts.

Fuck Winter 2021

Work has been terrible. I actually have some help now, but we now only have an eight hour window to get stuff out in, so there's twice as much work as before. They brought in a few new people late last week and early this week, meaning we have to train. I'm fucking tired of training. I'm fucking tired of doing Quality Assurance stuff, period, and don't want to do it at future employers.

This Winter has been plenty cold for my taste, colder than I care for at least considering that I fucking hate Winter, but it's really now starting to kick our ass. My mom's mastectomy was on the 10th, so I decided to take the 11th off, then decided to take the 12th off as well since I had a followup for my blood labs. I don't even think I expected the weather to be as shitty as it was this week when I requested those days off, it was just good timing. I called in to work on the 10th since we were supposed to get freezing rain, along with the fact that work, or one person at work in particular, pissed me off so bad the day before, plus they wanted us to work ten hours that day. We're supposed to get more shitty weather a couple of times next week.

Back to work, we're supposed to be starting twelve hour shifts on March 8th. Group A will be working Sunday through Tuesday, Groub B will be working Wednesday through Friday, and the groups will be switching off on doing eight hour shifts on Saturdays. Like Group A will do one Saturday, Group B the next, Group A the week after that, and so on. I'm still not sure how I feel about all this. My biggest fear is being drafted to the most confusing job.

I'm in no hurry for March 8th to get here, but I'm already ready for Spring.

All that my brain will allow

Man, January 6th was a really fucked up day! I found out that morning that my mom has breast cancer. Since I'm concentrating on the events of January 6th, I'll talk more about that later. Being a third shifter, I went to bed and slept through the day. When I got up, I had two messages. One was from a friend saying that protesters had infiltrated the Capitol. That message was from 3:11 p.m., so the drama had died down by the time I got up. The other message was from a friend/ex-coworker saying that one of our mutual friends/ex-coworkers had passed away. He was one of my favorite ex-coworkers, and I was really hoping to meet up with him for coffee after the Pandemic blows over. He was in his mid-sixties. We used to talk about music a lot, including his time working in radio. I found out two nights later that he died from Covid-19. It absolutely infuriates me that a lot of people aren't taking Covid seriously, especially people who got it and came out of it fine. I'm still having a hard time believing he's gone.

The good news about my mom's breast cancer is that they found it really early. She's going to have a mastectomy, and won't be needing chemo or radiation.

I was hoping work would slow down, but it hasn't. It hasn't helped that night shift is still severely understaffed. We'll all be going back to day shift starting this Monday. I'm physically, mentally, and emotionally tired. I've been doing this blog for over ten years now, and looking for another career has been a running theme. You would think that my current predicament would motivate someone to look for another job or career, but seriously, all I want to do after work is watch some tv and sleep. Hell, I was hoping to add some more to this entry, maybe even talk about music some, but I've come up with all that my brain will allow at this time.