I've been spending a lot of time working on the house, and we're really making progress on a couple of projects around here. It's been great, and hopefully we'll get out of the transitional phase real quick and into the completed project state.
A couple weeks ago I mentioned how my bank didn't exist out here, and it was going to cause some trouble if I started prolifically using my debit card. Luckily, I haven't, but I went ahead and started a new account at Chase Bank, and will be closing the old one shortly. Once I put in my paychecks, I'll be back up to what I left New Jersey with, after the costs of replacing my window and paying for my gym membership.
I had an appointment at UPS today. I took a tour of the facilities and generally got given the new-guy rundown, as part of a group tour. I have an appointment in two weeks at 5 am to interview. Why 5 am? I know from their ads that they're specifically looking for Preload and Twilight shifts. They've also spoken of a Driver Helper position, which pays about 150% of the Loader/Unloader position. This is an on-call position, however, and is from between 8 AM and 6 PM-- so day and Twilight Shifts are a no go if you also want to be eligible for this position. I'm going to take the Preload shift, which is 3 AM to 9 AM. Furthermore, if you get rehired in January, your selected shift becomes a year-long lock-in, and with school becoming a possibility in the spring, I need to adjust to employment that won't interfere with classes.
UPS also provides tuition reimbursement to the tune of 3,000 dollars a semester ;)
The other night I got completely absorbed in a video game after dinner. I don't really mind (I should have been working on the house), but I really enjoyed getting immersed in something. I spent an hour on a single level. I was playing Star Wars: Force Unleashed, which is a really sharp game where you play as Darth Vader's apprentice, unravelling the untold story that takes place between Episodes 3 and 4. Basically, the apprentice is raised by Vader to think his ultimate goal is to assist in deposing the Emperor. Vader fakes his death so that the Emperor won't see what's coming, and tells him to motivate the Emperor's enemies to distract him and his spies. Unwittingly, this leads to the Apprentice creating the Rebel Alliance. In truth, the Emperor was behind it from the beginning, and training and motivation of the Apprentice was a long con to get all the various rebels out in the open.
Anyway, this one level. Inside a half-built Death Star, in a cargo bay, you fight several waves of storm troopers... but its not that simple. Scout Troopers, which are snipers, sit in very difficult to get to spots at the top of the room. Basically, if you don't break line of sight or change direction every couple of seconds, you get shot in the head with some sort of super laser that knocks you back a few yards and takes out a big chunk of your health. This is the beginning of the end, the knock backs. The knock backs can create a ruthless chain that results in your inability to do anything to prevent your impending death. "Jumptroopers", which are Stormtroopers equipped with fucking jetpacks, have rocket launchers which also knock me back. Finally, there are Purge troopers, which are twelve feet tall, black clad troopers that have got to be some sort of brainwashed Wookies or something. They've got shields, and dont take much damage unless you stunned them first by either hitting them with lightning or throwing a car at their head (both of which are more common than you'd probably believe.) These guys will grab you by the shoulders and throw you at something, or shoot a blue arcing rocket at you, which, go figure, knocks you back. Your started with the super easy tasks of fending off the snipers, jump troopers, storm troopers, storm troopers with laser turrets, two purge troopers, and an AT-ET walker. Defeat the AT-ET, and you're greated with an AT-AT. Defeat the AT-AT and you're greeted by SIX purge troopers and a dozen heavily armed storm troopers. That room alone was harder than defeating Darth Vader and the Emperor...
Friday, October 16, 2009
Thursday, October 8, 2009
Another Day, Another Bother
It's been a whole week. And what a week it's been...
Thursday and Friday of last week were productive, with around ten applications and resumes going out over the two days. Friday I went out with one of the girl's from work and her crew of photobuddies. It strikes me as odd that even in a new town I'm falling in with a crowd of Grad students. Utterly baffling how I can never quite find the appropriate age group. Not that I'm concerned. On the first Friday of each month most of the local galleries open up new exhibits and we went gallery-hopping, which is probably the A.F.A version of a bar crawl. We went to a "bootleg exhibition", which is like a normal gallery show but usually in abandoned real estate, rented for a night, and common professional presentation concepts, like podiums, risers, frames, mats, are all thrown to the wind. More than a few sculptural pieces rested on cardboard boxes. The display itself is a work of art, in a counter-culture sort of way.
Saturday I had work at the Bungalow, and being the first there, I opened up. Though, I transposed a digit in the security code and got a nice visit from the police officer. All ended well within a few minutes though, an we opened up to a day of business that was slow but eventually built itself up into something good. I forgot to pack a lunch (trying to save as much of what little money is coming in) so I went across the street to a strikingly popular hole in the wall. Turns out this place serves u some of the best burgers I've ever had, and while the price tags are big compared to most burger joints, the portions are big enough to make up for it. The girl I shared the shift with, Haley, needed to get out of hers for Sunday and I eagerly took the shift. Despite the rocky start to the day, I was pretty excited since I had made plans to take two extra shifts (one for the next day, another for this coming Tuesday) and had a pretty good day. I finished reading Invisible Man and soon thereafter moved onto The Great Gatsby.
Sam and Steph had left for Danville, Illinois, where both sets of parents live, and spent the night there. It was that night at around one in the morning when I woke up to the sound of a car alarm; my car alarm. I turned on lights and went outside with the dogs, but found no one, and since the driver's side of my door was opposite of me, I couldn't tell that anything had been done. I turned the alarm off with my keys, which I found underneath a heavy cookbook. I presumed the book had set off the alarm.
When I woke the next morning, I showered, shaved, packed up my laptop and some books to go open the store and enjoy a quiet day keeping the shop. What I found when I went out to the car was that the alarm had been set off legitimately by someone punching a large hole in the window. They neglected to take anything, as breaking the glass set off the alarm, and they ran. I had to call someone else to cover the shift (so, new expense + not making the money for that shift) and spent the next few hours with the police/insurance company. Once they left, I spent a few hours cleaning up the car and the driveway. Then I went inside and wasn't able to find the clear plastic that I was told was there, and would be appropriate for use patching up the window. This was failure number two. Then, I decided to clean up the house, to be productive to renew my spirits. Failure numero tres (that's three, in Spanish) was when the circuit broke when I turned on the vacuum plunging 80% of the house into sort-of darkness (it was sundown), and then when the roommates didn't pick up when I reached out via cellular phone to find out which circuit needed to be flipped. When I did find out, it had become total darkness and so I descended into the basement with a candle in fairly typical horror movie cliche. This was not before I tried to clean up the yard, which went nowhere because there's a fair amount of aimless debris that I can't get rid of, but isn't being used. for anything. And I also tried to make dinner, but the stove wouldn't light, because apparently that's ALSO on the overburdened circuit...
Oh well. This is a problem we're working on fixing (the overburdened circuit).
I finally got a callback from the insurance company on Tuesday. First I was told I had no deductible. Elation ensued. At the end of the phone call, she corrected herself: I have a hundred dollar deductible. I called one of the partner agency's on the list the next day, first thing, and had new glass in my car by five pm the next day. I went to the Herron Grad Student's Senior Thesis show and was pretty impressed by the work from most of the students. Some of it was a bit of reach, but overall they put on a great show.
Thursday and Friday of last week were productive, with around ten applications and resumes going out over the two days. Friday I went out with one of the girl's from work and her crew of photobuddies. It strikes me as odd that even in a new town I'm falling in with a crowd of Grad students. Utterly baffling how I can never quite find the appropriate age group. Not that I'm concerned. On the first Friday of each month most of the local galleries open up new exhibits and we went gallery-hopping, which is probably the A.F.A version of a bar crawl. We went to a "bootleg exhibition", which is like a normal gallery show but usually in abandoned real estate, rented for a night, and common professional presentation concepts, like podiums, risers, frames, mats, are all thrown to the wind. More than a few sculptural pieces rested on cardboard boxes. The display itself is a work of art, in a counter-culture sort of way.
Saturday I had work at the Bungalow, and being the first there, I opened up. Though, I transposed a digit in the security code and got a nice visit from the police officer. All ended well within a few minutes though, an we opened up to a day of business that was slow but eventually built itself up into something good. I forgot to pack a lunch (trying to save as much of what little money is coming in) so I went across the street to a strikingly popular hole in the wall. Turns out this place serves u some of the best burgers I've ever had, and while the price tags are big compared to most burger joints, the portions are big enough to make up for it. The girl I shared the shift with, Haley, needed to get out of hers for Sunday and I eagerly took the shift. Despite the rocky start to the day, I was pretty excited since I had made plans to take two extra shifts (one for the next day, another for this coming Tuesday) and had a pretty good day. I finished reading Invisible Man and soon thereafter moved onto The Great Gatsby.
Sam and Steph had left for Danville, Illinois, where both sets of parents live, and spent the night there. It was that night at around one in the morning when I woke up to the sound of a car alarm; my car alarm. I turned on lights and went outside with the dogs, but found no one, and since the driver's side of my door was opposite of me, I couldn't tell that anything had been done. I turned the alarm off with my keys, which I found underneath a heavy cookbook. I presumed the book had set off the alarm.
When I woke the next morning, I showered, shaved, packed up my laptop and some books to go open the store and enjoy a quiet day keeping the shop. What I found when I went out to the car was that the alarm had been set off legitimately by someone punching a large hole in the window. They neglected to take anything, as breaking the glass set off the alarm, and they ran. I had to call someone else to cover the shift (so, new expense + not making the money for that shift) and spent the next few hours with the police/insurance company. Once they left, I spent a few hours cleaning up the car and the driveway. Then I went inside and wasn't able to find the clear plastic that I was told was there, and would be appropriate for use patching up the window. This was failure number two. Then, I decided to clean up the house, to be productive to renew my spirits. Failure numero tres (that's three, in Spanish) was when the circuit broke when I turned on the vacuum plunging 80% of the house into sort-of darkness (it was sundown), and then when the roommates didn't pick up when I reached out via cellular phone to find out which circuit needed to be flipped. When I did find out, it had become total darkness and so I descended into the basement with a candle in fairly typical horror movie cliche. This was not before I tried to clean up the yard, which went nowhere because there's a fair amount of aimless debris that I can't get rid of, but isn't being used. for anything. And I also tried to make dinner, but the stove wouldn't light, because apparently that's ALSO on the overburdened circuit...
Oh well. This is a problem we're working on fixing (the overburdened circuit).
I finally got a callback from the insurance company on Tuesday. First I was told I had no deductible. Elation ensued. At the end of the phone call, she corrected herself: I have a hundred dollar deductible. I called one of the partner agency's on the list the next day, first thing, and had new glass in my car by five pm the next day. I went to the Herron Grad Student's Senior Thesis show and was pretty impressed by the work from most of the students. Some of it was a bit of reach, but overall they put on a great show.
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