tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26615190259717071032024-02-28T13:18:10.966-05:00But we still have the radio!Dealing with things like depression during a Depression. And music.Bretthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04260256880409732259noreply@blogger.comBlogger183125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2661519025971707103.post-54569085830105929082024-02-28T13:17:00.001-05:002024-02-28T13:17:13.766-05:00Computer update!<p> I'm just stopping in to say that I have a working desktop PC again! I had my ex-brother-in-law look at the desktop PC I had been using since 2020, not just to fix it, but to upgrade it as well. He couldn't really do everything we both wanted with the chassis of the old computer, so he fixed up a computer that he had sitting around. I'm very happy with it, it's much faster, and no more freezing up after a couple of minutes of idling. Hopefully I'll get to do more blogging soon. I'd start up a whole new entry, but I had a busy morning, and just want to retreat to the sofa.</p>Bretthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04260256880409732259noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2661519025971707103.post-10104240063830728102024-01-03T14:54:00.000-05:002024-01-03T14:54:05.614-05:00Last quarter, 2023<p> I'm typing this from my ancient laptop at a coffee shop. I fucked up my desktop PC trying to fix it. Someone with a similar problem (freezing up after being idle for a few minutes) said that they fixed the problem just by taking the RAM stick out and blowing on it. I haven't opened up a computer since I left my job at a computer company in 2001, but I figured it was something I could probably do myself. I eventually got it back together. That fix didn't work. Then I noticed that the front of the chassis wasn't all the way on. I can't remember since I actually haven't looked at it since then, but I think I got it on, but then the computer wouldn't start. I might be able to fix it myself, but I haven't been in the mood to. I may just pay someone to look at it.</p><p>Others have said that the problem could be the CPU, some have fixed their computers by upgrading it. I figure mine could use an upgrade, along with doubling the RAM. I'm definitely going to have someone else do that for me, too.</p><p>I'm so glad the Peak season is over. It was rougher than last year, due to having two accounts to work for instead of just one, and not having a good bilingual helper this year. I had two Cuban women who barely speak or understand English, and I had another person who was actually trainable, but I was too busy to give her as much training as I would've liked. She was let go recently because she supposedly failed her background check. We had another girl for a couple of weeks who was a real piece of work. Security walked her out the very first day for being insubordinate, but she was brought back the next day. The woman complained about <b>ev-er-y-thing</b>, and loved talking more than listening, which I will not abide. If I had hiring/firing power, she would never have come back after that first day, or I would've fired her after just a couple of days. Oh, and my supervisor was moved to another building for November and December, he was not missed at all. He was back this past Tuesday, thankfully he didn't bother me too much. I was seriously thinking about gunning for his position, or just pestering the way-higher ups into making me a lead or something similar. While I'm good at the work, I'm terrible with people, and really have no desire to deal with staffing issues. I'm better at just finding shit that's wrong.</p><p>I may do more posts about movies and music soon, since I think a lot of my rants about them on Facebook are probably more suited to the blog. I thought about making a whole new blog just for that, because personal stuff has taken up so much of it in previous years, but I'm too lazy for that. One subject I want to do soon is my current take on the Loudness Wars. It hasn't been a pet hobby for me in a long time, but I do have some thoughts. </p>Bretthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04260256880409732259noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2661519025971707103.post-18133275372064159082023-09-14T16:14:00.003-04:002023-09-14T16:16:57.281-04:00A quick one... (September 2023 edition)<p> It's been entirely too long since I've posted. Entries that are only about two or three paragraphs can take hours to write. On the rare occasions when I get on my home computer, I end up spending a lot of time watching Youtube videos, and find myself moving on to other stuff when it gets too late to do an entry. So I'm just going to try to make this quick.</p><p>Speaking of the home computer, I've been having issues with it freezing up if I leave it idle for just a few minutes since January. That's when Avast Antivirus pestered me about some drivers needing updating. I did the Microsoft Update to tell me what drivers needed updating. Some of these "new" drivers dated back to 2019. I bought this computer at the end of 2019 or beginning of 2020. I figured "What the hell", and updated the drivers. And that's when the freezing bullshit started. I did a Restore thing, but I think that only helped temporarily. Can't figure out what the exact problem is. So, I haven't been real enthused about using this computer. I'm probably better off taking my ancient laptop to coffee shops again, might probably help keep me from staying home if I have plans to go out.</p><p>Work is still ridiculous. The Peak season has started, and we're still ridiculously understaffed. My direct boss is still an idiot. I've been trying to work extra hours since June. For the first month or two, all I was really doing was making up for the fact that we weren't working Saturdays. I tried to get even more days in, in hopes of being able to pay all my bills and still have money for groceries, and maybe actually have disposable income, including going to a concert or two. I did go to one concert, where I was fucking miserable most of the time, but that's a story for another time. What I really wanted to do was see Duran Duran at the Bourbon & Beyond Festival, but I didn't make enough money for that. I'm really bummed about not getting to see them, especially since my brother and his husband got to see them in Austin. As much as I hate my job, I'd sure hate it a lot fucking less if it paid enough to afford me to go to concerts, or indulge in my music/movie collecting addiction. Like, in order to afford concerts, I'd have to have only one day off a week, and that place drains me too much to do that. Hell, I was so exhausted this past Sunday that it ruined me for the rest of the work week, and I spent a good portion of my first day off after that taking naps.</p><p>The one good thing I can say about work this past Summer is that I got to have Memorial Day, Independence Day, and Labor Day off.</p><p>In other news, I popped my Covid cherry in August. Yup, I somehow managed to go three and a half years without getting it. As far as congestion issues go, it wasn't bad at all. That (Covid-less) sinus infection I had in late November/early December last year was way worse in that regard. No, what really did me in was the brain fog that can come with Covid. I can deal with congestion, but the brain fog made me feel dumber, and that's what really concerned me enough to get tested.</p><p><b>(TMI Alert) </b>Also in August was the tenth anniversary of the last time I got laid. Or about as laid as I <b>can</b> get, but that's another story that I may not even tell here. Sex is pretty overrated, despite how fun movies and tv shows make it look*, but I miss intimacy. I'm trying to come to terms with the fact that, aside from hugs, I may never touch another woman ever again.</p><p>*<i>Florence Pugh in (or maybe I should say ON) Oppenheimer comes to mind.</i></p>Bretthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04260256880409732259noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2661519025971707103.post-65203301605848359862023-05-25T13:09:00.001-04:002023-05-25T13:09:33.985-04:00May 2023<p> To follow up on my most recent post, "Community Standards", it took about three weeks or so, but Facebook finally quit giving me 24-hour restrictions from Liking posts and comments. I guess that's something I'll have to deal with every once in a while.</p><p>My main helper at work moved to Nebraska. Her husband got a job there. It must pay well to move all the way over there for.</p><p>Speaking of work, they keep coming up with more ways to annoy me. One was closing down the first building (we had five warehouses in the area up until a month or so ago), and bringing those people and accounts to my building. They moved a bunch of bulk storage lanes for our main account over to what had been dock staging lanes, and a lot of outgoing stuff that used to be staged in those lanes are now staged in lanes on the opposite end of the building. So, instead of just doing dock audits in a corner of the building, I have to go back and forth from one side of the building to the other. But at least that account is away from the conveyors! The other account new to this building occupies a quarter of the Picking area, where another account that moved to a new warehouse previously occupied. We have enough issues with the main account on our conveyors, we really didn't need another account adding more bullshit. And QA is understaffed and overworked as it is, this adds a lot more to our workload. I talked our manager (not my supervisor, but his boss) into talking to the bean counters or powers-that-be about adding another QA or two. He came back, and said something like, "I talked to them, and they're like 'Well, volume is leveling off, and (blah blah blah).'"</p><p>Just this past week, they started a new break schedule. Keep in mind, we work 6:00am to 6:30pm. Our old break schedule was first break at 9:00am, lunch from 12:00 to 12:30pm, and last break was at 3:00pm. The first and last breaks were fifteen minutes. Now, we have three ten-minute breaks. The schedule now is first break at 8:30am, lunch from 11:00 to 11:30am, second break at 1:30pm, and last break at 4:00pm. This new schedule fucking SUCKS! From what I've heard, someone went and complained to HR about the break schedule violating labor laws. I'm about as pro-Labor as you can get, but having three 10-minute breaks throughout a 12-hour shift is some bullshit. That's barely enough time to eat a candy bar, not to mention that's when I have to make calls or deal with HR, and 15-minutes wasn't even enough for those! They should've just given us two 20-minute breaks instead.</p><p>Another reason we need more QAs is because the other two that I currently have cannot be depended on to show up on Sundays. I think I can count on one hand the number of times both of them have come in on a Sunday. I now expect one of them to be out any on given Sunday, but even expecting it doesn't make me any less pissed off when it does happen.</p><p>One good thing from work: my boss is in Memphis for three months, doing some kind of career-furthering training or something. It started at the beginning of April, should end at the end of June. What I should do is find another god damn job before he comes back, so I don't have to deal directly with his ass ever again.</p><p>Since I always talk about holidays, I am happy to say that we have Memorial Day off. But I still have to work that Sunday.<br /><span></span></p><a name='more'></a>I've had some disappointment in the world of dating lately. But I may save that for another entry.<p></p>Bretthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04260256880409732259noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2661519025971707103.post-16182363710542775462023-03-23T16:57:00.000-04:002023-03-23T16:57:40.525-04:00"Community Standards"<p>Or, "Mark Zuckerberg, I'm getting really tired of your shit!"</p><p>I kind of like Facebook. But at the same time, I fucking hate it. It's the easiest way to keep up with a large number of friends without actually having to message each one of them. Louisville Mojo is dead, MySpace is totally different, I don't really like Instagram, and I hated Twitter long before Elon Musk got his hands on it. I know of no viable competitor to Facebook, so I'm forced to put up with it.</p><p>But Facebook has really been testing my patience these past two weeks.</p><p>So, what have they done that's been pissing me off so bad? They've been giving me 24-hour restrictions from Liking posts and comments, due to not following some vague "Community Standards".</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmuEVSfDAh1hlUaM927JNQcbUTFLaKrvObbaQt031EaF0bwKwTQfUPS1sNINyz6e77KGQbHrMMzoKyGnr1tLgAhxMSdk2ISvKB93Eq-L51gx-kZL5VnozG7dL1GCC62TcrcqYxQY8YGoFNmBODaoFOgvyabceEF_z75MXJVtQAp5VlcUgggPIWcP0C/s690/FB%20Bullshit%203.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="341" data-original-width="690" height="198" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmuEVSfDAh1hlUaM927JNQcbUTFLaKrvObbaQt031EaF0bwKwTQfUPS1sNINyz6e77KGQbHrMMzoKyGnr1tLgAhxMSdk2ISvKB93Eq-L51gx-kZL5VnozG7dL1GCC62TcrcqYxQY8YGoFNmBODaoFOgvyabceEF_z75MXJVtQAp5VlcUgggPIWcP0C/w400-h198/FB%20Bullshit%203.JPG" width="400" /></a></div><br /><p>Due to the nature of the restriction, I'm guessing that I must have Liked what they perceive to be too many posts in a certain amount of time. I guess Facebook thinks I love my friends and cat pictures too much. But I've looked through the "Community Standards", and there's nothing explicitly stating that you can only Like a certain amount of posts/comments in a certain amount of time. This is the closest I can find to mentioning anything like that, under "Spam", which is under "Integrity and Authenticity":</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkjk6xrTKIo1Sk5-T9jEKSgDg7hr6K1ROWlMXbN8GEqj2RZIz8PrhPhjVMN06JJjGWt1obFWDzOFLHnK9hKTiQebPxPDXt0_R1LuQ43KGGj7usff0sEW50E5mq-hqyo7kjYqo8RCIlmJkfQ6HIeH15aWV16zPV_NEY_OAnxHJhnRzH-2dF4BlKlF4w/s862/FB%20Bullshit%202.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="123" data-original-width="862" height="93" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkjk6xrTKIo1Sk5-T9jEKSgDg7hr6K1ROWlMXbN8GEqj2RZIz8PrhPhjVMN06JJjGWt1obFWDzOFLHnK9hKTiQebPxPDXt0_R1LuQ43KGGj7usff0sEW50E5mq-hqyo7kjYqo8RCIlmJkfQ6HIeH15aWV16zPV_NEY_OAnxHJhnRzH-2dF4BlKlF4w/w640-h93/FB%20Bullshit%202.JPG" width="640" /></a></div><br /><p>I cannot find anyone at Facebook to complain to about this particular problem. You can appeal a decision about something you posted that got taken down, but I don't think the Review Teams or Oversight Board handle things like Liking posts/comments. But I've got this here blog, so I can complain about it here!</p><p>Between March 11th and March 17th, I had multiple 24-hour restrictions from Liking posts and comments. On March 18th, I started refraining from Liking news articles on the News tab, which cut down my Likes by a lot. I didn't get another 24-hour restriction until just an hour or two ago today, March 23rd.</p><p>I figure it must be some dumbass AI who thinks I'm a bot.</p><p>To Facebook: I've been on Facebook for almost 15 years. I've been the same person on that profile for that entire 15 years. I assure you that I'm not a bot, and my profile hasn't even been hacked by some foreign scammer. Why restrict people from interacting on posts when there's no stated limit to it?</p><p>Facebook, please... <span style="font-size: medium;"><b>FIX YOUR SHIT!!!😡</b></span></p>Bretthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04260256880409732259noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2661519025971707103.post-74853942151692977352023-03-03T11:11:00.000-05:002023-03-03T11:11:24.614-05:00Like squeezing blood from a stone<p> Work has been extra annoying this past month. Since Peak is over, our client isn't as willing to throw money at us, meaning they're being stingy. They've even gone so far as to downsize my already understaffed department. My shift only had three people, when four is the bare minimum we need to run adequately. I'm really glad that my main helper told me at the end of that week that they were going to pull this shit, because my supervisor said absolutely nothing to me about it. He might possibly have been afraid of me going ballistic, which I would have, but it's better for me to go ballistic early, rather than come in at the start of the week and go ballistic then because I'm just learning about this shit that morning. I was happy to see my helper that morning, but it turns out she would be in Picking, leaving me as the only QA on A-Shift. A couple of weeks later, they moved one girl from B-Shift, and one girl who worked Monday through Friday, to A-Shift. I don't think either of these girls speak or understand much English. The other woman we had working Monday through Friday is now on B-Shift, so we now have no extra help on Mondays and Tuesdays.</p><p>They picked a really fucking bad time to downsize QA, because we've been busy as fuck for the most part! Or at least too busy to just have three QAs. Hell, I've found some fucked up shit that the girl who was originally on B-Shift should've reported, but didn't. It turns out, even if B-Shift finds errors, they don't technically report them like they're supposed to. There are days that B-Shift supposedly has no errors, which is a crock of shit, because I find a lot of crap that B-Shift did wrong.</p><p>I mentioned in my previous entry that I was going to ditch my therapist. I kind of wish I had just canceled my last appointment with him, because he annoyed me bad enough that I was like, "Yup, I'm done."</p><p>I've loved singing karaoke since 2004. I got to do it a lot during the "good ol' days" of Louisville Mojo, but I haven't gotten to do it much after 2008 or 2009. There is one place I've been going to since November that does really, really fun karaoke, but they only do it once a month. I always have such a good time there! But then I get depressed the day or so after that, because I can't have that much fun every night, and I can't channel the confidence I have on stage to the rest of my life off the stage. The guy who KJ's (karaoke jockey) there has a weekly gig elsewhere on Tuesday nights, but with Tuesdays being my Friday, I'm so wore out that I'm dead to the world by 8:00 or 9:00. I really need to hang out with friends more between those Wednesdays, but trying to make plans with others is a pain in the ass, especially if they're homebodies like I am.</p>Bretthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04260256880409732259noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2661519025971707103.post-41638834027113816772023-01-28T12:49:00.000-05:002023-01-28T12:49:47.091-05:00Peak 2022<p> Eh, I guess I can talk about the past few months.</p><p>I mentioned back in September that the QA I worked with since February would be relocating. I believe it was early October when she did. The week after she quit, we got one of our people back who had worked for a couple of months earlier in the year, and who was pretty good. She was so out of practice though that I had to retrain her a little bit to get her back into the groove.</p><p style="text-align: left;">The week of my birthday was alright, but would've been better had I not been on Qelbree that week. Qelbree is a non-stimulant ADHD medicine. It was definitely effective, but it also made me not want to eat anything.</p><p style="text-align: left;"></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>At work that Sunday, I ended up vomiting after lunch because I ate and drank too much, except it wasn't really any more than normal.</li><li>That Tuesday after work, I went to see Napalm Death and Brujeria. I got a 20 piece Chicken McNuggets from McDonald's on my way to the venue, and ate them when I arrived there. It was really ten pieces too many, but I managed to keep it down. The show was a lot of fun. I wish I could've seen them at one of their Texas dates, because MDC opened on the Texas dates.</li><li>That Thursday, I had a therapist appointment in the morning, and went to see The English Beat that night. I went to Taco Bell for lunch and just got a Chicken Quesadilla, and could barely finish it. Went to the Best Buy up in St. Matthews to look for movies, and found out they don't carry movies anymore, so I went elsewhere to go movie shopping. I ended up having a massive headache the rest of the day. Went to Smashburger before the English Beat show and got three chicken tenders, and could barely finish them. Got to the show, talked to a few friends. I really only know four English Beat/General Public songs (<i>Mirror In The Bathroom, Save It For Later, Tenderness, </i>and GP's cover of <i>I'll Take You There)</i>. I was ready to leave early due to my headache, so I looked up their setlists from previous shows, and discovered that they actually do my three favorite songs early in the set, and did my least favorite towards the end of the show, so I decided to stick around for my three favorite songs, then left.</li><li>I went to see <i>Black Panther: Wakanda Forever</i> that Friday, and did some shopping. I ended up vomiting when I went to the bathroom just before going to bed that night. I decided that night that I was going to quit taking Qelbree.</li><li>That Saturday was one where I was scheduled to work, but I ended up calling in, partially due to being sick from the Qelbree, but also because the drastic change in weather had me fucked up. It was unseasonably warm that week, which I didn't mind at all. But we went from being in the mid-60s Friday afternoon, to fucking snowing on Saturday morning, and I couldn't deal with it.</li></ul>This year was the first year that I had both Thanksgiving and Black Friday off since 2008. Thanksgiving was weird, mostly because my parents are weird. My dad is an asshole, and my mom's memory has been going to shit, which in turn greatly annoys my dad. My mom's memory problems supposedly stem from her meds, and not any dementia or Alzheimer's. As for Black Friday, I've been determined that if I ever had a Black Friday off, I'd spend it being a lazy motherfucker and just watch movies, or maybe just one long ass movie. I finally got around to watching the director's cut of Wim Wenders' <i>Until The End Of The World</i>, which is almost five hours long, but probably took a lot longer than that to get through, due to having to take an occasional nap or break from the movie.<p></p><p style="text-align: left;">We actually got Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and the day after Christmas off, and I used my Floating Holiday for the 27th, so I had that whole week off. I was glad we had that time off, since a shitty snow/ice event that weekend made driving hazardous. I went nowhere between the Thursday afternoon before Christmas, and the Tuesday morning after Christmas, and ended up doing Christmas with the parents that Tuesday.</p><p style="text-align: left;">New Year's weekend was fucking stupid. Christmas Eve fell on a Saturday that my shift would've normally had to work. You'd think they would've made us work the following Saturday, which was the 31st, but thankfully they kept that as B-Shift's Saturday, so we got New Year's Eve off. Here's where it gets stupid. I've had every New Year's Day off since I started at this place. Since New Year's Day this year fell on a Sunday, it was decided that NYD would be observed that Monday, the 2nd, so the Monday-Friday people would have Monday off. I would've had no problem taking NYD off and coming in that Monday. What they did instead was have Outbound come in on Sunday, and they gave us Monday off. The only reason I can think of for this is that this year, they've decided to give us time and a half if we end up working on an observed holiday, instead of giving us a Floating Holiday like they had been, and I guess they didn't want to pay us extra to come in on Monday. Since Sunday wasn't observed, we wouldn't be getting holiday pay or time and a half for working on Sunday, so they made us come in on actual New Year's Day. It's hard enough to get people to come in on a regular Sunday morning, having them come in on a New Year's Day that falls on a Sunday is downright moronic. Meanwhile, Inbound had New Year's Day off. I don't know if they had to come in that Monday, and at this point I'm beyond caring. But anyway, we worked less than half the day because we didn't have that much work. They should've just bit the bullet and had us work half the day Monday. Oh, and I was doubly miserable coming in on New Year's Day because I didn't get enough sleep, if at all, though not for lack of trying. I wasn't even up late or anything, I just couldn't sleep.</p><p style="text-align: left;">I've never had MLK Day off. I was prepared to work on MLK Day this year, even though my employer has made it a paid holiday. The Monday before MLK Day, my supervisor told us that we had MLK Day off, so I was looking forward to having it off. The next morning, he told us that they got an e-mail from our client telling them that they wanted my shift to work on MLK Day, so only the Monday-Friday people would be off. This really pissed me off. I assumed that all the Monday-Friday departments would be off, but they all ended up coming in. The only people who didn't come in were my supervisor and our two Monday-Friday QAs, so it was a normal day aside from those three people not being there. It would've been fine if my boss hadn't gotten my hopes up the week before.</p><span><a name='more'></a></span><p style="text-align: left;">The only reason I even stay at that place is because I'm a slave to this country's shitty for-profit healthcare system. I need the insurance, and I can't afford to pay COBRA premiums if I leave for another job. This is not a problem in any other advanced country. But I also feel like I'd just end up in another shitty place similar to it. It doesn't matter where I work, I'm going to be miserable. Hell, the Photo department at "Main ex-Employer" was the best job I've ever had, and I was even miserable there!<span></span></p><!--more-->I have an appointment with my therapist coming up. I don't think I'm going to continue seeing him after that. He's fairly liberal, which is a plus, but he's too old to be relatable to, and he talks too much. At my last appointment, he started saying something before I was finished making my point, and I had to talk over him to finish my point. But it's really more me than him. I don't see the point in going if I'm not going to put in the work to really change my situation, and just end up talking about the same shit every time.<br /><span><!--more--></span><p></p>Bretthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04260256880409732259noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2661519025971707103.post-35258834169056716122022-10-13T15:56:00.000-04:002022-10-13T15:56:35.683-04:00Star Trekkin' and physical media<p> I'm not only a music collector, I'm also an avid movie collector. I am not going to address streaming here. The 1980s and '90s may have been a golden age when it came to the selection of movies you could rent, but VHS was a shit format due to incorrect aspect ratios and poor quality altogether. If you were a movie purist, you were collecting movies on laser disc. Then DVD came along, and it was fine for the age of Standard Definition, but kind of underwhelming once you got a taste of HD. Now, with 1080p and 4K UHD blu-rays, we're in an era where movie presentation at home is kicking ass, but they're more challenging to acquire at a brick and mortar store. Suncoast is long gone, and Best Buy's movie selection is shrinking, and will probably be gone before too long. I can sometimes find blu-rays from boutique labels like Criterion, Shout/Scream Factory, Arrow Video, or Kino Lorber at stores like FYE and Barnes & Noble, but your best bet is ordering online. I usually try to order the boutique companies' product from their own websites, and try to avoid Amazon, but I still do Amazon every once in a while.</p><p>I have a ton of DVDs, and a ton of 1080p blu-rays, and quite a few on UHD, but only if they include the movie on both UHD and 1080p blu-ray, because I have neither a 4K TV nor a UHD player, but I like collecting UHDs so I can future proof. Even though DVD sucks by today's standards, I still feel bad for upgrading since a lot of the DVDs I have, especially "Pulp Fiction" and "Fight Club", have pretty elaborate packaging. My collecting policy is to try to buy movies on blu-ray that I don't own on DVD. I'll wait to upgrade my DVDs until they come out on UHD. It's a good idea to read or watch reviews before upgrading.</p><p>Here's my history of buying Star Trek movies, and for this entry I'm only referring to the movies that came out between 1979 and 2002. I bought a complete set of the deluxe editions in 2008. The Motion Picture was the Director's Edition. Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country was a really interesting one because it was the only Star Trek movie to be filmed in Super 35, so they opened up the matte to 1.78:1. I was pretty underwhelmed with the image quality of these DVDs, but they were all we had at the time. I believe I bought The Motion Picture on blu-ray in 2015, just because it was the theatrical version. I thought it looked fine, but more knowledgeable people complained about the DNR (Digital Noise Reduction) on it and all the other Star Trek blu-rays out at the time. In 2016, a special 25th anniversary edition of Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan was released on blu-ray, based on a new 4K scan. I finally bought that in 2021.</p><p>I'm pretty sure Paramount has pissed off a lot of Star Trek fans in the past year or so, especially me. Not long after I bought that edition of Star Trek II, they announced that they were releasing the first four movies on UHD and blu-ray. A lot of us were like, "What about V and VI? What about the Next Generation movies?" Well, a lot of us bought the 4-movie collection. Not long after that, it was announced that they were working on redoing the VFX for the Director's Edition of The Motion Picture for 4K. A lot of us assumed they would be putting out a set including it with V and VI. This past Summer, they announced a number of releases for September, including a six movie set, and the six movies sold separately. When I heard about the separate movies, I thought, "Cool, I can just buy TMP:Director's Edition, V and VI, and be done with it." Unfortunately, while II through VI included both the UHDs and 1080p blu-rays, the UHDs and 1080p blu-rays for The Motion Picture:Director's Edition were being sold separately. I wanted <b>all</b> of them in 1080p <b>and </b>UHD, god damn it! The only way I could get the Director's Edition in both UHD and 1080p together was to get it in the 6-movie collection. So I preordered the 6-movie collection on Amazon through a link from The Digital Bits, because I love The Digital Bits, and want to support them. Somewhere around this time, maybe just a bit later, I also preordered the "Halloween: 1995-2002" Scream Factory UHD/blu-ray set. Unlike the first five Halloween movies, these had to be sold together because Miramax owns the later Halloween movies, and would only license them out to Scream Factory if they were sold in a set. The Star Trek set was set to release on September 6th, and the Halloween set was set to release on October 4th. I thought to myself, "They're coming out a month apart, there's no way they'll charge me for both at the same time, right?"</p><p>WRONG! But I'll get to that in a minute. I don't know what happened, but it seems like Amazon didn't get enough copies of the Star Trek set to actually send out in September, and they were telling me it was expected to arrive on <b>November 1st</b>! I went to Best Buy to see if they had the set, and that was a big no. All they had were a couple of copies of a couple of the individual movies. I checked Barnes & Noble, and they had one set! But it was about $30+ more than I would be paying for it on Amazon, and it sounded like a disc might have been loose. I have paid a premium elsewhere to spite Amazon, but I didn't quite have the money to justify doing it this time, so I decided to stick with my Amazon order. So anyway, October 4th comes, and as far as I knew, the Star Trek set was still expected to arrive by November 1st, and the Halloween set was expected to arrive in mid-to-late November. At some point, I checked my e-mail, and saw a message telling me to update my method of payment for one order. I had about $200 or less in the bank, enough for one set. It turns out they successfully charged me for the Halloween set, but payment for the Star Trek set was declined due to lack of funds. The Star Trek set was a higher priority for me, and the Halloween set hadn't shipped yet, so I canceled the Halloween set, and planned to use the money I got back to get the Star Trek set. These companies will take your money in a heartbeat, but are always slow to give it back to you. I finally got the money back...that Friday, after I had already went ahead and "updated" my payment method. I decided to wait to try and order the Halloween set later. The Star Trek set arrived just the next day!</p><p>While I was typing this up, I decided to see how much the individual sets for the UHD and 1080p TMP:Director's Edition, V, and VI would cost. It might have actually been cheaper to buy all of those than it would have to buy the 6-movie collection, thus not rendering my 4-movie collection obsolete. Fuck me running. Now, I have the 4-movie collection and the 35th Anniversary Edition of The Wrath Of Khan to sell.</p>Bretthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04260256880409732259noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2661519025971707103.post-16550456398873482012022-09-23T16:39:00.006-04:002022-09-23T16:50:37.076-04:00Labor Day 2022, and the week that sucked balls.<p><br /> The two new girls that started at my work in August were gone just a couple of weeks later. My idiot boss waited a whole fucking month, this week to be exact, to replace them. The replacements seem to be doing pretty good for their first couple of days, though. But we may be losing the woman that's been working with me since February pretty soon. She's moving up to north Indiana to be closer with her girlfriend.</p><p>My company managed to make a mockery of Labor Day again this year. We didn't work all god damned day like last year, but I was there for a little over nine hours. I don't feel like we had enough work to justify keeping us for more than half the day, and my holiday might have been salvageable if they had let us go after eight hours, but that extra hour fucking ruined it. I was hoping to be able to make it through an entire movie before wanting to go to bed, but I was so fucking tired that I only made it through the first hour of the original Total Recall before going to bed. I had to finish it the following night.</p><p>This week has sucked balls. Sweaty, stinky balls. Work was horrible, made worse by the fact that we had to work last Saturday. I really should've taken a Floating Holiday on Saturday, but I didn't want to leave everyone else hanging. I'm not gonna go into specifics about why else work sucked. This was also the week of the Louder Than Life festival in Louisville. I thought maybe I could at least make it to the Thursday edition, when Nine Inch Nails, Ministry, and Tenacious D were playing, until I saw what a single day GA ticket cost, which was $129, plus a $20 or $30 fee. Then I was like, "Never mind." I've only seen Nine Inch Nails once, way back in November 1994. I've seen Ministry twice, but I wanted to see them in Covington, KY back this past March, and didn't get to because I didn't have enough money, and I'm pissed that I had to miss their second Kentucky appearance this year. I've never seen Tenacious D live. There was at least one band playing that night that I would've avoided like the plague, I heard more than enough of them when I went to Louder Than Life in 2019. Hint: the singer is a woman who does a lot of corny ass screaming. But the cherry turd on top of this week was shopping at Walmart on Friday morning, being 99.9% sure that I put everything that was in my cart into my car's trunk, and then somehow not having one or two bags of stuff worth $50+ from there when I got home. I've looked everywhere for it. My car, my apartment, went back to the store twice, and I even stopped at Meijer on that last trip, since that was my last stop before heading home this morning, and looked around the area where I had parked. Nothing. And there's nothing Walmart can do to help. You know, those assholes in charge of Walmart make more money than either I or the typical Walmart employee can even fathom, you'd think they'd throw us a fucking bone every once in a while. This is also the second time in about three years that this has happened to me at Walmart. I wonder if this wouldn't happen so much if they either changed the color of their bags, or the color of their carts? After all, other places I shop at (Kroger, Meijer, Price Less) have bags that contrast starkly with their carts, while Walmart's bags are virtually the same color as their carts <b>and</b> their parking lots, creating something of a camouflage. Maybe I should start a petition on Change.org to get Walmart to change the color of their bags.</p><p>That last trip to Walmart was mostly to pick up a prescription. The guy at Walmart's exit told me to have a good day. I told him, "My day's pretty much fucked."</p><p>I'll leave you with Ministry's live version of "Breathe" from 1990.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/sNCeL7oepIM" width="320" youtube-src-id="sNCeL7oepIM"></iframe></div><p></p>Bretthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04260256880409732259noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2661519025971707103.post-22316689875119481922022-08-04T15:08:00.001-04:002022-08-04T15:08:25.055-04:00Staycation 2022, and going back to work<p> I was hoping to make it out to the Austin TX area to visit my brother before the Peak Season at work hit, but I still didn't feel like I had enough money for the trip, even after my sizable backpay check. But that's okay, because my brother decided to come up to Kentucky on the second-to-last weekend of July, his first trip up here since 2019. I was originally planning on just trying to get that Saturday, Sunday, and Monday off, which Monday was absolutely necessary because I had to drive my brother to the airport. But then I decided to request that Tuesday off as well, since I had hoped to take a whole week off before the Peak season, and figured I might as well make it that week. In reality, it was more like a week and a half off. It was really nice getting to spend time with my brother, and really nice not having to deal with work for a week and a half.</p><p>Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday were supposed to be rainy days, so I decided to work on some stuff in my apartment. I've got plenty of boxes lying around, and I refer to the decor of my apartment as, "I stopped unpacking when I went back to work." I really didn't do a lot toward cleaning up the place, but what little I did do was quite a bit of work. One of my biggest jobs was setting up my turntable and cassette deck, which I have hooked up to a DJ mixer that's hooked up to the Line In jack on my computer. When it was set up, I could tell that there was sound going to the mixer, but no sound was coming out of the speakers. After some searching, I discovered that I need to set up my Line In jack to be outputted through the speakers, instead of whatever the hell they were set to go out to. I played some records and tapes to test with. At one point, I put in my Judas Priest "Unleashed In The East" tape in, and the deck fucking ate it! Thankfully, it's a dual cassette deck, so I still have the other side to play tapes with. But after all that, I was like, "Fuck it, I'm done for the day." I have a story as to why I was wanting to listen to that particular tape, but I'll save that for last.</p><p>I went out on Friday night to an event where Goth and Industrial music was being played. I had so much fun! I ended that week in a good mood, but I knew going back to work would ruin that.</p><p>Sunday: It was raining pretty hard on my drive to work, and I absolutely hate driving in the rain, so the rain made going back to work even more horrible than if it had been dry out. And there were only two of us QAs there that Sunday. I ended up having to cover two distinct areas. Just working in either one of those areas will wear you out after a while, but going back and forth between them both will wear you out real quick! The entire Outbound department got to leave three and a half hours early. I think Inbound was staying until 6:30. I had plenty of work to do on the dock, so I could've stayed the whole day to work on it, but I was so exhausted by 3:00 that I just left then. I was in bed by 7:00 that night.</p><p>Monday: A girl who started the previous Tuesday and didn't show up on Sunday actually showed up on Monday. We also had a new girl show up at the beginning of the day, which shocked the hell out of us because our brand new people usually don't come in until 8:00 or so. We decided that I'd train the newest girl in one of the other areas until 8:00 when our boss came in, who would then tell us where to go. He decided to keep me training her, and he was going to have the Monday-Friday woman work on the dock until she left at 4:30, to which I would take over on the dock then. But sometime before lunch, he asked me if I felt like she'd be comfortable working on her own after lunch. God damn, there is a hell of a lot to learn in any given area, it took me at least a week to get comfortable with it when I started! I started off by showing her what we do and how to do it, and had barely gotten her to get some practice in by the time he asked me that. So I was pretty much like, "Hell no!" I trained her until 4:30, showing her one of the other main areas when things were slow in the area I was training her in. Taking over the dock at 4:30 was a fucking nightmare, and I got a massive headache. The headache was made worse when some dumbass new woman who thought we were scheduled to leave at 6:00 asked me what we do at 6:00. I told her that we work until 6:30, and we only leave at 6:00 if one of the higher ups tells us we can leave at 6:00. She said her husband and kids were waiting outside, and I'm like, "That's not my problem." She said she'd have to check her paperwork again because she swore that it only said she'd be there until 6:00. Needless to say, she didn't return the next day.</p><p>Tuesday: Tuesdays are almost always the worst day of the work week, like I'm being fucked with no lube, thus I call them Lubeless Tuesdays. I also got a massive headache on this day. One thing I absolutely hate is being sent to multiple areas in a day, and I ended up working in four different areas this Tuesday. Getting into the dock groove is especially hard, I do my best work there when I start and end my day there. My boss's original plan for me on Tuesday was to have me get the trainee squared away in the first half hour, then have me go to the area of another account to take pictures of some pallets that were getting ready to ship out, and the Monday-Friday woman would work on the dock. I actually started helping out in the area that I always go to first, then tried to get my trainee squared away before heading to the other account. I could barely get anything done there because my trainee had a lot of questions that I tried to answer via e-mail. At one point, I just gave up with the e-mail and went there to show her what to do. At our meeting after our first break, it was determined that the Monday-Friday guy who usually does audits in the other account would be going to another building that's supposedly even more understaffed than we are, and I'd be doing the audits in the other account after I was done taking pictures. About an hour later, we got an e-mail from our boss saying that I'd be going to the dock after lunch, and the Monday-Friday woman would be going to do audits in another section. Fuck me running! I was really hoping she'd be on the dock all day, especially since we had so many "hubs" shipping out that day. These hubs are the bane of my existence, since I'm supposed to take pictures of <b>every single fucking one</b> before they go on the trucks, and then take one picture when they're in the trucks. To add insult to injury, I think it was about 10:30-ish when the Monday-Friday woman e-mailed me asking if I could go to the dock and finish one of the hub trucks for her, because she still hadn't taken her 10:00 break. Things were so hectic there that I never made it back to the other account. And they started loading a hub truck right around my lunch time (12:00). I didn't even go to lunch until almost 1:30. Just as I was getting ready to go to lunch, I got an e-mail from my trainee saying that she knew I was busy, but if I could come help her out at some point. I wasn't just busy, I was overwhelmed! I apologized, and told her that I was just now going to lunch. I sent her an e-mail much later asking about the problem, but I didn't get a reply, and I never made it out to her. I usually pick up Taco Bell on my way home on Tuesdays (Taco Bell Tuesdays!), but I was so tired by the end of that day that I didn't bother, and went to bed by 8:00.</p><p>It occurred to me that I probably should've looked for another job while I was out, but I was too busy doing shit with the apartment. Besides, I need to go to the dentist before I look for another job. I realized that I'm paying about $30 per paycheck for dental insurance, so I better fucking use it!</p><p>Whew! So, back to the Judas Priest tape. I bought it in 1997 at a gas station that some friends worked at. I bought the remastered CD in 2005, only for the bonus tracks. The Judas Priest remasters are notoriously bad, the only one that's supposedly come out good was the 30th Anniversary Edition of "Turbo". Every time I listened to the "Unleashed In The East" CD, I thought to myself, "I do seem to remember the tape sounding better." So the reason why I was wanting to listen to it last week was to hear if it sounded anywhere near as good as I remembered, but it didn't get far before the player ate it.</p>Bretthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04260256880409732259noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2661519025971707103.post-82903298183796046082022-07-02T13:57:00.012-04:002022-07-04T08:24:53.305-04:00Untitled (July 2nd, 2022)<p> Life has been really annoying lately. My dad was in the hospital briefly in May. My mom was in the hospital briefly in June. And I ended an 11 year friendship with my ex after the Supreme Court overturned Roe V Wade. She no longer cared whether abortion was going to stay legal or not, and she didn't understand why I would care, since as she put it, I'm not going to get pregnant, nor am I going to get anyone pregnant anytime soon. I care because I'm not a total fucking sociopath! But I'm not sure what pissed her off more, my take on it, or the legitimate reason I gave her to be pissed off at me, which I'm not going to go into because it really was stupid of me. But fuck her, I'm done with her stupid ass, I almost wish I hadn't bothered trying to be more than just friends with her eleven years ago, even if it would mean that I'd be 45 years old and never actually had a girlfriend in my life. She was never very bright, and she was also extremely gullible, but she really went Full Dumbass when she started watching some jagoff Youtuber's videos almost two and a half years ago, some grifter who claims to be a liberal and used to pander to the Left, but now panders to the Right because they're so much easier to grift.</p><p>All my life, I've had to dumb myself down to try to be accepted among the general public, or to make myself more "dateable" to a large number of women. <b>No more!</b></p><p>I do have a couple of bits of good news related to my most recent post back in April. One is that I've reached that point where all my medications are now free for the rest of the year. The other is that I found out that I'm not getting paid as much as I'm supposed to be, so I'll now be making $2 more an hour than I have been. It's still not enough, but it should take a little bit of the sting off. I found out a few weeks ago that my temp co-workers were getting paid more than me, so I bitched about it. HR found out that I was supposedly bypassed for a $2 bump in pay last August, so they're not only giving me a $2 raise, but it should be retroactive, giving me $2 for every hour I've worked since sometime last August. I thought for sure that I did get a $2 raise last August, because I went up from $15.50 to $17.50. It makes me wonder if my coworkers were getting paid more than I was this time last year, or if they just didn't want to piss off my current coworkers by cutting their pay from $19/hour to $17/hour?</p><p>(Update, July 4) I forgot to mention, I worked half of Memorial Day, but I get to have the fourth of July off! That's the first non-Christmas or New Year holiday I've had off in over a year.</p>Bretthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04260256880409732259noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2661519025971707103.post-46757590780618677012022-04-27T16:00:00.001-04:002022-04-27T16:00:17.153-04:00 Mo' Money, Mo' Problems, My Ass! April 2022 Edition<p> I'm just giving an update for the sake of giving an update. I have a lot that I've been wanting to get off my chest, but don't feel like taking the time to type it all out. The gist of it is that I make just enough money at my work to cover rent, my car payment*, car insurance, phone and electric bills, Hulu with HBO and Disney+, and not much else. I've tried working overtime, but those checks have been underwhelming. We've been so slow these past two weeks that not only do we not have opportunity for OT, but we've been leaving early every day, so my next check is gonna suck. I'm either going to have to get a second job, or find a full time job that pays at least $23 an hour, which is over $5 more than what I'm currently making.</p><p>I still haven't recovered from my insurance making me pay almost $300 for a 90-day supply of Januvia a few weeks ago, when I only needed a 30-day supply! Hell, just today, my nurse practitioner took me off of Januvia and put me on Rybelsus, so I now have 60+ days worth of Januvia just sitting around. She did say that I could continue to take it while being on this medicine, but probably wouldn't see much benefit. I may continue to take it until it's gone just to get rid of it, can't let $300 go to waste! And it looks like I'll have to pay this month's phone and electric bills next month.</p><p><i>*Regarding the car payment, I can't help but think, "I wouldn't have this car payment if I hadn't totaled my car three years ago, or at least not had to deal with the amount of bullshit I had to deal with and gotten my check sooner rather than later." But what's done is done, and beating myself up over it is counterproductive.</i></p>Bretthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04260256880409732259noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2661519025971707103.post-33135565645981980682022-01-01T11:41:00.000-05:002022-01-01T11:41:51.173-05:00Kitkat, Halloween, and the end of 2021<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEim6wLRjDrhKJ24Z16YLMS7GweR-azZOUEwBOH0N2urefd9XJuo-Ni7CA8znXMCdXvG98eetZ4LX_m8a0Law-keUoSjttdVHw7wXZMdeujw2_vk6Z8-D-14yv-I2YKZjJdg1u5RoZkNaVxc9G-yKldMHxCBj9wVwz9GzgLD35QoA3hjv6sBXDyKCOFz=s1695" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1695" data-original-width="746" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEim6wLRjDrhKJ24Z16YLMS7GweR-azZOUEwBOH0N2urefd9XJuo-Ni7CA8znXMCdXvG98eetZ4LX_m8a0Law-keUoSjttdVHw7wXZMdeujw2_vk6Z8-D-14yv-I2YKZjJdg1u5RoZkNaVxc9G-yKldMHxCBj9wVwz9GzgLD35QoA3hjv6sBXDyKCOFz=s320" width="141" /></a></div><br /> I was originally planning on doing a longer entry about Kitkat, but oddly enough the more time passes, the less I want to write about her. I can't remember what month it was when she first came to us, but it wasn't long after we moved into my mom and dad's new house at the end of 2003/early 2004. I think it must have been February because I remember it being cold out, but it could also have been March. Anyway, this cute little orange furball came to our back door during Winter 2004. I was kinda hoping she would move on to the next house, because we weren't sure how our cat Sheba would feel about sharing the house with another cat. My mom eventually decided she wanted her in the house, so we got her in the house. She wasn't real receptive to anyone at first. I started to get her attention by tapping my fingers really fast on the edge of the couch cushions while I was sitting and watching tv, and I'd let her scratch the shit out of my hand. That's how I managed to domesticate her, and probably why she chose me as her daddy.<p></p><p>She stayed with mom and dad during the two times that I moved out, but I decided to take her with me when I moved out this last time because she was old and I knew she didn't have a lot of time left. She had a hyper thyroid, and just a couple of years ago she went from being a chonk to being skin and bones, and our cat Rascal was starting to see her as prey. I knew she'd get more love and peace being alone with me.</p><p>The last week of October, she stopped eating. That Thursday morning, I noticed fluids on the bathroom rug and her bed. I took her to the vet. The vet said that her kidneys weren't doing good, she had ulcers in her mouth that would make it hard to eat, and that her body temperature was low despite not being hypothermic. I asked about euthanization, and he said that would probably be the best thing for her. I got to go inside. I had been preparing for this moment for two years and didn't think I was going to cry, but once the finality hit me, I really broke down. Hell, I had Kitkat before I joined Louisville Mojo, meaning that I knew her longer than I've known the majority of my Louisville area friends! I got to spend a little bit of time with her before the injections, and continued to hold her while the vet gave her the injections, and while she passed away. I had her cremated, and got her ashes in an urn and a clay paw print less than a week later. It took me a good while to get used to not having her around.</p><p>That weekend was not only Halloween weekend, but that was also my shift's Saturday to work. I might have went ahead and worked had it not been Halloween weekend, but since it was Halloween, I called in both Saturday and Sunday, saying that I had a death in the family. This was absolutely true, because I loved that cat more than my own dad, or a lot of our extended family for that matter. I went to a show that Saturday night, my first indoor music show since seeing Slayer in November 2019. I knew virtually no one there, and while it sucked not having anyone to talk to in between sets, it was honestly the most fun I had had in years! As for Halloween day, I spent it the way I like to spend all my Halloweens, watching horror movies. I had to stop for a little bit to take a trip to my Amazon "locker" because my Scream Factory UHD/blu-ray copies of the first three Halloween movies had finally arrived. My movie lineup went like this:</p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Frankenstein Versus The Space Monster (via Svengoolie)</li><li>In The Mouth Of Madness</li><li>Street Trash (celebrating the twentieth anniversary of my seeing it at the original Alamo Drafthouse)</li><li>Nightbreed: The Director's Cut</li><li>Halloween (1978), the broadcast tv version via the new Halloween blu-ray.</li></ul>Was this Halloween everything I had hoped for? Not really, but it beat having to work.<p></p><span><a name='more'></a></span><p>December 28th was my last work day of 2021. I got New Year's Day off. B-Shift had to work on New Year's Eve, and I didn't feel the least bit sorry for them, seeing as that they didn't have to work on Memorial Day, July 4th, Labor Day, or Halloween. They also got Christmas Eve off, meaning that they got a five day weekend for Christmas, which included not having to deal with the day after Christmas like we did. That sucked. I really need a whole extra day off just to recover from the holidays.</p><p></p>Bretthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04260256880409732259noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2661519025971707103.post-46191428731459469902021-12-18T10:16:00.000-05:002021-12-18T10:16:32.802-05:00Peak 2021<p> 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.</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>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, <b>especially</b> 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.</p><p>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.</p>Bretthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04260256880409732259noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2661519025971707103.post-71932852274266386132021-09-25T12:55:00.000-04:002021-09-25T12:55:47.825-04:00Mo' money, mo' problems, my ass!<p>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.</p><p>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 <b>to</b> 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.</p><p>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.</p><p>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, <a href="https://youtu.be/kLJYs_rOpbk" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">"I want Rich People Problems!"</a></p><p>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.</p>Bretthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04260256880409732259noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2661519025971707103.post-9005722450023865892021-09-17T11:07:00.000-04:002021-09-17T11:07:50.486-04:00The Labor Day that wasn't<p> 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.</p><p>Hypothetically, A-Shift should be getting Thanksgiving off, but I'm sure they'll find some way to screw us.</p><p>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 <b>just</b> 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.</p><p>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.</p><p>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 <b>maybe</b>, 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, <a href="https://youtu.be/QLJBfGdej7g" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Death Wish 3</a>, 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.</p><p>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.</p>Bretthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04260256880409732259noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2661519025971707103.post-44814156610530939112021-07-23T13:23:00.002-04:002021-07-23T13:23:10.937-04:00A working class hero is something to be!<p>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 <b>and</b> 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.</p><p>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!</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>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 <b>a lot</b> 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.</p><p>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!</p><p>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 <a href="https://www.benefits.gov/benefit/4727" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">COBRA</a> 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.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/zzHs6DaB9Ls" width="320" youtube-src-id="zzHs6DaB9Ls"></iframe></div><br /><p><br /></p>Bretthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04260256880409732259noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2661519025971707103.post-50687312802568632402021-06-03T15:52:00.004-04:002021-06-03T16:23:54.341-04:002021: Worst Memorial Day Ever (So Far)<p>God damn, my employer just keeps getting worse and worse when it comes to holidays.</p><p>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 <b>nothing</b> 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.</p><p>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!</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>*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.</p>Bretthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04260256880409732259noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2661519025971707103.post-51469584471793231172021-05-23T18:53:00.004-04:002021-05-23T19:14:27.075-04:00Apartment hunting sucks, Part 2<p> 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.</p><p>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 <b>every</b> 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.</p><p>I return to work tomorrow. I haven't missed it <b>at all</b>. I've especially not missed being in a big damn hurry all the time.</p><p>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.</p>Bretthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04260256880409732259noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2661519025971707103.post-6084603045780531612021-04-27T17:06:00.003-04:002021-04-27T17:16:48.547-04:00Apartment hunting sucks<p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Week 1: Find a place, start packing.</li><li>Week 2: Continue packing, move stuff into new place.</li><li>Weeks 3 and 4: Unpack and organize everything, and make the place a home.</li></ul><div>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.</div><div><br /></div><div>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.</div><div><br /></div><div>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.</div><div><br /></div><div>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!</div><p></p>Bretthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04260256880409732259noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2661519025971707103.post-25021686160802323322021-03-06T19:59:00.001-05:002021-03-06T19:59:39.265-05:00Shift change postponed<p>Listening to The Moody Blues, "Days Of Future Passed". </p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>I may post about my recent adventures in music collecting, especially in regards to recovering from the Loudness War, sometime soon.</p>Bretthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04260256880409732259noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2661519025971707103.post-26007331807417199042021-02-19T20:23:00.002-05:002021-02-21T15:58:49.005-05:00Fuck Winter 2021, Part 2<p> 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.</p><p>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?</p><p>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.</p>Bretthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04260256880409732259noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2661519025971707103.post-26791826714913751202021-02-12T15:42:00.000-05:002021-02-12T15:42:44.993-05:00Fuck Winter 2021<p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>I'm in no hurry for March 8th to get here, but I'm already ready for Spring.</p>Bretthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04260256880409732259noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2661519025971707103.post-34957378599087765262021-01-30T04:36:00.001-05:002021-01-30T04:36:19.822-05:00All that my brain will allow<p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p>Bretthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04260256880409732259noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2661519025971707103.post-52563815568168174162020-12-24T23:27:00.000-05:002020-12-24T23:27:58.064-05:00Peak 2020<p> I haven't really had a whole lot to say. Still dealing with life during a pandemic. Still working at the same place, decided to tough it out through Peak. I went to night shift in August, and I seem to have far less anxiety than I did since my last entry, thanks to not having to deal with my dad a whole lot. Peak wasn't as bad this year, in that I didn't have to work a lot of ten-hour days. Good help has been hard to find, though. I've trained four temps since August, all are gone. What has really sucked was having to work Halloween night even though it was on a Saturday, and working ten hours on the Wednesday night before Thanksgiving. I've got a four day weekend for Christmas, and I'm essentially celebrating Halloween and my birthday as well.</p><p>The only good thing I can say about this year is that I've managed to save a lot of money, though it probable helped that my ex moved to Ohio (I had been helping her with grocery money even after I moved back home), and I got paid an extra $4 an hour during Peak. I'm even planning on looking for an apartment soon.</p>Bretthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04260256880409732259noreply@blogger.com0