2021: Worst Memorial Day Ever (So Far)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Apartment hunting sucks, Part 2

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

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

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

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

Apartment hunting sucks

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Shift change postponed

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fuck Winter 2021, Part 2

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

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

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

Fuck Winter 2021

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

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

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

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

All that my brain will allow

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

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

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