iannixon.com

Merry Christmas! Hope Santa was good to all and such. :)

I’m writing this on my ThinkPad R61i by the way; it showed up on Monday.  I haven’t had time to write in the blog since then, so now that I’m stuffed with Christmas dinner, I thought I’d write about occurrences between the last post and today.

Well, of course, the laptop finally showed up, after fear of USPS losing it in the holiday mix of packages.  It showed up on Monday; the day after we got a bunch of ice and snow.  The city busses were running late on Monday, and the Q never showed up downtown at 1:10 and 1:40, so I had to take a B and walk home from Whalley.  The B I took showed up at the Green at 1:55, and because of traffic, I was dropped off in Westville around 2:40.  I then proceeded to walk home, dodging piles of snow and unshoveled sidewalks.  This walk, usually lasting about 10-15 minutes, took me 25 minutes.  I had to walk slow so I didn’t lose my balance on the ice, and by the time I got home, it was well after 3 PM.  I then had to work from 330p-730p, which made it that much more painful.  I got to open the box, and that was about it.

That night at work had gone surprisingly well.  I didn’t have too many incidents with customers, except at the very end (which always happens).  I had turned my register’s lane light off and put up my ‘closed’ sign, got about halfway through ringing up this nice lady’s order, and this other biznitch comes in, moves my ‘closed’ sign out of the way, and starts loading up the belt with her stuff.  ”Whatever,” I thought.  There wasn’t really anything I could do at that point.

So I finished ringing up the nice lady’s order, and as she was paying, I hear the woman behind her suddenly exclaim, “MY HAM FELL OFF THE BELT!  I need another package of this.  I need someone to go get me a package of this ham.”  I held my finger up in a kinda “hang on a minute” form, as I wasn’t done with the other woman yet, and she got all huffy on me.  She left my line and asked another associate to go to the deli and get the ham resliced and packaged.  Then, after I stuff away the nice lady’s credit card signature slip, I suddenly hear, “DON’T TOUCH ANYTHING.  I have to get this the way I like it so I can bag it the way I like.”

“No problem,” I said, and I sat down on my bagging rack waiting for her to finish.  (And from this point on, all time measures are literal, not figurative.)  5 minutes later, she goes “Okay, go ahead.”  I start scanning.  As expected, she stares at the LCD with the item scrollback behind me, occasionally looking down to see what I’m scanning.  Then, after a couple minutes, she moves down to the bagging area with her carriage, pocket book in the child rack up top, and says “Why aren’t there ever any bags on this side?  I don’t like having my back to my pocket book, someone can just come up and snatch it without me looking.”

“Ma’am, I can stop and fill the bag rack for you if you’d like,” I said.  I was expecting her to want me to do that, but she was like “No, it’s alright.  I just wanna get out of this freaking place.”  You and me both, lady.

So I finish scanning her stuff and subtotaled it, and had -just- opened my mouth to recite my usual, “Your total is (blah blah blah)” line, when she goes “DON’T SUBTOTAL IT YET.  The nice young lady’s coming back with my ham.”  I don’t know what took so long, but it had already been another 5 minutes (this woman’s order was huge), and the other associate wasn’t back with the ham yet.

We’re standing there, awkwardly silent, and the woman looks up at my screen again.  She goes, “Why’d you subtotal it?  I told you not to.”

“I had already subtotalled it before you told me not to.  It doesn’t make a difference, anyway, as the subtotal is always shown here in the bottom right.  Me pressing ’subtotal’ just makes it come up in a bigger font over here,” and I pointed to the bigger subtotal.  ”Hmph,” she went.

Another 3 minutes or so had passed by, and at this time, it was already 7:40.  At this point, I didn’t care how long it took, because a) I was getting paid for this extra time, and b) I would have to get the manager override card to clock out anyway.

The woman’s fumbling through her purse for something, and she pulls out a Visa gift card.  She says to me, “Do you take these?”  Only hearing half of what she said, and thinking she wanted to pay with that card, I said, “Are you purchasing that card or is it yours?”

She gave me a look like I had just called her a criminal.  She sternly says, “I would like to pay with this card. Do you accept these cards?”  ”Yes,” I said.

Finally, the other associate came back with the ham.  This was about 8 minutes after I had finished the order.  I said to her, “Thanks” and was about to scan the package, when she says, “No no no, the deli manager told me to tell her that since her old bag had opened, this package was on us.”  I could have punched something.

The woman pays with her $50 Visa gift card, and then the rest by her debit card.   A credit card slip comes out for her to sign (cuz that’s how those gift cards are charged), and she goes, “WHAT’S THIS FOR?!?”  I told her it was for the gift card.  ”Oh.”

Finally, I had given her all her crap, and quickly signed off the register so nothing else could possibly be scanned or anything.  Normally at the end of a shift, I would have helped the customer put the rest of her bags in her carriage, but this time, I scurried off to go get the manager override card.  Without saying “Thanks!” or “Have a great holiday!” or “Merry Christmas!”

Holy crap.  I didn’t think I’d go into that much detail.  Oh, well.  Onward.

For Christmas, I got a new wallet, Mr. Bean’s Holiday, and a Dirt Devil mini vacuum.  Some relatives also stopped by and dropped off some nice clothes and cash for us.  This year doesn’t really feel like Christmas at all, but the random cash+gifts is a little nice :)

I’m working tomorrow from 6:15 AM til 12:30 PM.  Thank GOD it’s not on the front end, though, I have a feeling tomorrow’s not gonna be too busy cuz of today being Christmas and all.

Saturday, we’re supposed to go over my mom’s friend’s house.  We haven’t seen them all year, and it’ll be nice to hang out with them again.

Umm, I think that’s all I have planned for vacation so far.  And for this blog post, too.  So until next time, Merry Christmas :)

Well, I checked the status of the package again tonight, and it finally shows up as being in CT! I’ll most likely get it on Monday.

I can’t wait! :D

So, a couple weeks ago, I paid John M. for his ThinkPad R61i, and he mailed it on Monday, December 15.  He used USPS Priority mail, and purchased delivery confirmation and insurance.

Usually, my experiences with Priority Mail are pretty nice; sending packages throughout the US usually deliver within 2-3 days.  I know that 2-3 day time period is an estimate and not a guarantee.  However, none of my Priority packages have been delivered out of this time frame before.

So, I was expecting delivery on Wednesday, December 17, as John sent it before cutoff on Monday.  By Wednesday, my delivery confirmation number hadn’t updated.  Thinking the mail might have gotten picked up before he mailed it on Monday, I assumed it would come on Thursday the 18th.  It didn’t.  And the tracking number still said it was accepted at the origin.

I called USPS yesterday morning to see what was going on, and the guy seemed helpful.  He told me that it was on their list of packages to expect for Wednesday the 17th, but it never showed up.  He then told me to watch out for the mailman that day and, if he didn’t deliver the package with the mail, to call back first thing Saturday morning.  It wasn’t delivered yesterday, so I called this morning.

I got this nice lady who seemed nice.  She told me, though, that the packages hadn’t been sorted yet, and to call back in an hour and a half.  So I wait 1.5hrs and call back, and I get a different lady.  She seemed really hesitant to go look for or even inquire about the package based on my insurance or delivery confirmation number.  She then took my phone number and told me she’d grab some data to see if my package was included in the load, and then call back 10 minutes later.

About 15 minutes later, she called back and said the package wasn’t in the load.  She told me the same thing I had been told all along, that delivery confirmation is not a tracking number, and Priority mail was an estimate based on former deliveries, not a guarantee.  She then said that bad weather and stormsin North Carolina (the origin) last week in addition to this snow up here in the northeast were what was causing the delay.

Now, I could -possibly- see the snow up here causing a delay, if, ya know, it was snowing when the package was supposed to get here.  Also, I checked the weather history of North Carolina for last week; it was foggy some days, but there wasn’t any rain or storms or anything.  Blech.

So, I don’t think the Postal Service has any freaking clue where that box is.  I’m gonna give it til Friday the 26th, and if it hasn’t shown up, I’m going to start the insurance claim.  This is ridiculous.

Oh yeah.  If i don’t post again before the day, have a great Christmas. :)

Hope yours was peaceful and relaxing and all that crap. :)

Ummm, I don’t have much else to say than that except that IT SNOWED TODAY!!!!!!!!!! :D

It wasn’t a lot, we got maybe like 1/8″, and it all was washed out by rain around noon.  But it was nice to see it falling finally.

Tomorrow’s December.  Already.  And I’ve got the Christmas lights up.  Already.

But these are cool; they’re LED Christmas lights, and they only consume .0032 kWh. I calculated, and for the 3 sets I have, if I left them running 24/7 between 12/1 and 12/31 at our electricity rate, we’d only have to pay $1.51 on our electricity bill. They also look very very cool. Wheee.

That’s all. :)

I helped install 30 N-Computing terminals today at school. They’re really nice to work with. The units themselves are small little boxes where you plug in the monitor, keyboard, mouse and network cable. They screw onto the VESA mount screw holes on the back of a standard LCD.

They’re fast little buggers, all connecting to a server off in a closet somewhere else in the school. What’s nice about them is that they’re easily managed. You don’t have a billion computers to fix or update; just that one server. Same goes for apps; you don’t have to install the apps on every single computer. Just drop it on the server, and poof - they’re all there.

Okay, enough plugging. They’re just so freaking cool. :)

I also cleaned my room today after school. I got rid of a couple boxes of stuff I had, and now I have room for another tower. Currently, a Power Mac 6500/300 is sitting there, but I think it’ll be replaced with something else very soon. I just don’t know what yet.

Alrighty, done with my little blag for the night. Thanks for reading. :)

Welllll, not really.  But it is raining outside.  It’s been raining all day; it was foggy and gross this morning when I woke up, and stayed cloudy all day.  It’s also warm; 61.5F outside my window right now.  Ick.

Work went pretty smoothly.  I was put on a main line, and didn’t have a bagger for like 95% of the time.  A lot of people are buying stuff for Thanksgiving now, too; excessive amounts of canned foods, some turkeys are starting to come through, and lots of breads+stuffings.  I’m only scheduled for a cashier on Sunday this week; I have a feeling I’m gonna be put on the register a lot the following week.  Blah.

I also want to point out that Nancy D. is leaving the store tomorrow, for anyone who might be reading from 648; not like you didn’t already know.  But I’m sure she’ll be missed greatly.

Moving on; my current project is trying to make my blue & white G3 into a DHCP/NAT server.  The Netgear router I have doesn’t seem to be cutting it; torrents make it drop connections often, it doesn’t wanna cooperate with static IP assignments, etc.  Hopefully, the G3 will work a lot better at that kinda stuff, but we’ll see.  Other than that, I’ve just been busying myself with schoolwork and Stop and Shop.

I can’t believe November’s already more than halfway over.  Today marked the halfway point in the month.  It’s just so freaking hard to believe that Christmas time is closer than it seems.  Then comes the long stretch of winter months.  I can’t wait for it to snow. :)

So, I think that’s about all I have to blag about for tonight.  Gotta get to sleep so I can do my homework tomorrow morning before going into work.

Until next time :)

I keep forgetting about writing in this thing. Every once in a while, I’ll be like, “Hmm. I should blawg about dat.” Buuuuuut it never happens.

So, between the time I actually last wrote in here and now, here’s what happened.  (and I apologize in advance for any randomness that may occur; I might think of something that I forgot to include at any given point)

/me opens blag in a new tab to read last intelligent post

I dunno if I ever mentioned it, but I started working in General Merchandise at Stop and Shop at the end of September. This is in addition to File Maintenance and my normal cashiering. So far, it’s been really cool; the manager of that department is really nice and friendly, and not strict or (too) anal about anything. I do stuff from stocking the GM shelves to counting inventories to marking down old stock from the mezzanine upstairs to resell. It’s pretty fun.  :)

School has finally picked up into full swing.  The end of the first marking period is -already- this Friday.  It seemed to take foreeeeevverrrrrr when it was in progress, but now that it’s passed, it doesn’t feel like it took that long.  So far, I have a good feeling I’m doing well in all my classes.  I’m not really having too much trouble in any of them.  It’s also been easy balancing school and work; a lot easier than I thought it would.

Just in case you were wondering, I had no Halloween.  I was scheduled to work from 4 to 10.  And the next day, I took the SAT.  Bleck.

I had blood drawn for the first time last week.  I didn’t feel intimidated at all, just wanting the whole thing to be over so I could get back to class.  I didn’t think the effects would last as long as they did though; for the rest of the week, I constantly felt lightheaded and experienced some dizziness when I’d stand up really fast or lift something heavy.

Over the course of a couple weeks throughout late October/early November, I bought parts to fix and use my ThinkPad 600e I got back in August.  It needed a CD drive, as the one it had pooped out whenever the lens got to a certain distance from the spindle thingy, and I got it a new battery.  What I was kinda disappointed about was that the battery was for the UltraBay, not the battery slot.  So I can’t use the CD drive or Floppy drive when there’s no power outlet around.  I guess that’s okay, though.  I have it running Fundamentals for Legacy PCs, which is basically a really light version of XP.  It runs -really- well.  I use the laptop almost daily in school to RDP back to my home Optiplex.  I’ve got a Wi-Fi card and a Xircom ethernet card, so I’m able to connect with ethernet if wifi is unavailable, and vice versa.  Yay. :)

Ummmmmmmm.  I’m gonna go to Staples later (hopefully) and pick up some CD-Rs.  They have a huge sale on Sony CD-R stacks; 50 for $9, and 100 for $15.  I hope I can get down there before I have to go to work at 4:30.

That’s it for now.  I can’t think of anything else to say, except thanks for reading, and I hope to be writing here soooooooonnnn.  :)

It’s been over a week since I’ve written a post.  School and stuff has just gotten waaaaaaay too busy.

All my classes are going good so far.  The work is starting to pick up, but it’s nothing unbearable (yet).  I love my senior schedule; I have so much free time during my day to catch up on homework, relax somewhere, etc.  Plus, I get to leave at 12:30 every day, so that’s nice. :)

I completely skipped over getting the Dell.  It finally came on the 9th, and I love it so far.  I had a little trouble with the seller, which never got sorted out, but that’s another story.  The thing works for what I need it to do, even if it isn’t what I was expecting.

The Dell came with a SATA CD-ROM drive, which I promptly wanted to upgrade.  I kinda ordered fast from Newegg and got a DVD-ROM and CD-ROM drive without paying too much attention to the description.  This morning, I ordered a DVD-RW DL drive, and it’s coming tomorrow or Friday.  Whee :)

Also: we finally got cable internet on Friday!  It’s -such- a relief from the 150KB/s connection we were on before.  I’ve topped 3.4MB/s with SpeedBoost; it’s amaaaaaazingggggggggggg. Digital voice is pretty cool, too; the calls are a lot clearer than before.

I’m starting to work in the General Merchandise department for Stop and Shop.  I dunno who put me there, but at least it’s nice to have a little change.  Not looking forward to working from 9:30 AM to 5:00 PM on Saturday, though. :|

Speaking of Stop and Shop, it’s time for tonight’s rant.  Normally, I’ll tell a story of something that happened during my shift that day, but tonight’s special.  I wasn’t even -working- and something happened.

A couple weeks ago on my break, I went to the self-checkout to pay for the snack I bought.  On the screen of the self checkout is a button that mutes the lady’s narration as you scan stuff.  If you press it, she doesn’t talk during the scanning of items, but it automatically comes back on when you hit “Finish and Pay”.  I normally press the button, because I don’t really need to hear that annoying voice more than I do in a shift.  This one time, the woman in charge of the self checkouts comes up to me and asks why I muted it.  At the time, I thought she meant the scanner’s beep volume, as a previous customer had set it way low (and you couldn’t hear it too well).  I told her I hadn’t set the volume low, and turned it back up.  She then walked away.

So tonight, I went down to get some hummus and a laser pointer (random, I know).  I went to the self checkout, and hit the mute button on the screen (NOT the scanner beep button).  The woman stops talking, and I scan my two items.  Suddenly, I hear the same woman as before say, “I told you last time not to press that button, you’re not supposed to mute it.”  She then comes over, and I show her that the scanner beep was still at its loudest setting; the voice just wasn’t dictating prices.  She then says, “You’re not supposed to press that, don’t do it again, [etc.]“  I’m pretty sure she didn’t get that all that mute button does is stop the voice from talking, and it’s not a permanent setting.

Anyway, I plan to keep pressing it.  It’s there for the customers to use, and doesn’t harm the system in any way, shape or form.  If she has a problem, she can talk to the manager about it.

Whee.  That was fun. :)

I can’t believe September’s already half over.  Hopefully, sooner than later, it’ll be more like Fall outside.  Temperatures are already cooling off, but we’ve still been getting some warm and humid spikes here and there.  I just can’t wait for the cold weather. :D

The phone was left in my brother’s Jeep.  Yay. :)

…so instead of texting people, I’ll write a blog post. :)

To start off; I’ve got a couple work stories from Tuesday.  One involved a guy and his girlfriend, and the people waiting in line behind them.  A package of meat didn’t ring up as the “Save [$xx.xx] with your card!” price that was listed on the sticker, so I went to ask the front end manager what I should have done.  When I came back, the guy in the couple said, “I think they scanned their card while you were gone; could you check?”  Lo and behold, I scanned their card again, and it took off the next customers’ card number and put back the correct one.  The people behind them made comments under their breath, along the lines of “wtf is he talking about, I ain’t scan my card,” but didn’t bring anything up when I got to their order.

Later that night, a man came up to my register with a basket full of stuff.  He continued unloading it as I started to scan his items, and asked me what he should do with the basket.  Instead of making him walk back to the other end of the register, and since it wasn’t busy, I told him I’d take it.  As I was putting it in a storage cubby under my register, I heard my scanner beeping.  When I stood back up, I saw the guy pushing his stuff through my scanner onto the other belt.  Any cashier will know that this pretty much annoys the shit out of them, so I kinda reached into the pile of items and started taking them again, and the guy goes, “Sorry about that, I’ve just always had a secret desire to be a cashier. I thought to myself, “If you wanna be a cashier so badly, you can have my job.”

Whew, I wasn’t expecting those two stories to take up that much room.  Oh, well.  Onward!

On Wednesday, I bought a Dell Optiplex 330 on eBay (auction link here).  I normally wouldn’t buy something like that for that much on eBay, but with it being practically new, -and- including a 19″ LCD at $350, I thought it was a pretty good deal.  The seller shipped it on Thursday morning, and it should arrive here Monday or Tuesday.  I can’t wait!

I also got word that our Comcast appointment is Friday between 12:00 PM and 4:00 PM.  Not only will I have an ueber fast computer by then, we’ll also finally have internets faster than our current 150 KB/s DSL.  I’m gonna try to get out of school early or something so I can be here when they’re installing it.

Nothing really exciting happened at work today, so no more stories for this post.

As the title states, though, I did lose my phone.  I dunno where it is, but I can see on the AT&T Account History page that I’m getting a TON of texts from people.  Blah, of all times for me to lose it.  Seriously.  Hopefully, it’s in my brother’s Jeep, as that’s the last place I remember using it before coming home.  I’ll check it out when he gets home later.

Well, that’s it for now.  I hate to end posts on such an abrupt notice, but I always have trouble concluding things.  Eh.

TD Banknorth hadn’t cleared my check in time for me to catch the sale on the 1908WFP, so that failed.  Also, that desk I wanted to get at Staples is a discontinued product, so none of the stores around here have them.

Oh, well.  I’m eyeing a couple auctions on eBay, but I’m waiting for Stop and Shop to pay the direct deposit for last week.  I’m assuming they haven’t yet because since Monday was Labor Day; they’re prolly all a day behind.

I guess the only other thing I have to say is: goodbye summer 2008. :(

So here I am, the Monday before the Thursday of the start of school, blagging. I’ve been less active on this blog than I thought I would have been, but eh.  This past week, I’ve been finishing up some loose ends of summer work and stuff, and just pretty much relaxing before school kicks in again.

I still have to take a walk to the nature preserve up the hill and grab a few more pics for my AP Environmental project.  I still need pics of fauna, rock formation, and an aquatic area, all of which that forest has within.  Though, I have to go with someone else; I’ve heard there’s homeless people living in there. :|

One of the things I really wanna do before school starts (or at the beginning of the year) is get a new desk.  This one I have is aesthetically nice, but I’m way too paranoid with the main (…scratch that.  -all-) surfaces being glass.  I’m trying to find one made of wood, and one that has drawers.  I was eyeing a nice one on Staples’s website, but it’s a discontinued product, so a few stores only have like one or two left.

Also, I plan to order a Dell UltraSharp 1908WFP tomorrow morning.  The Labor Day sale ends at 8 AM Eastern, so I’m gonna be up pretty early ordering that.  I have to wait for a check to clear into my bank account, and since this was Labor Day weekend, they didn’t do any posting or anything, so hopefully, it’ll all be done tomorrow.  Pics to follow once it shows up and all.

I came across this customer at work yesterday who got mad at my bagging.  I put her loaf of Italian bread in next to a broccoli bunch, ’cause I figured nothing’s really protruding from anything.  She then proceeds to grab the bag from my hand, and says, “Here’s today’s lesson: you don’t put hard things in with soft things, like bread.  You know what, why don’t we let your bagger do the bagging; she looks like she knows what she’s doing.”  The special-needs bagger (who wasn’t being mean or sarcastic or anything) said to her, “Yeah, I’ve been working here for 12 years,” and the woman goes “Well no wonder you’re doing such a great job, unlike your cashier here.”  Blargh.  I just didn’t bag the rest of the order after I handed the woman all her receipts and coupons and everything, and waited until she left to keep going.

Our new uniforms went into effect on Saturday, and ever since then, I’ve gotten numerous comments about them.  Some people love the new colors, others ask me what -I- think about them, and too many people use the line, “Well don’t -you- look like a top banana!” (it’s a kindasortaish ‘mascot’ for Stop and Shop, they’ve used it in some promotions)

Today went pretty well; I didn’t really have any customers who were bitchtastic or anything.  Some were a bit unhappy for the crowdedness at the store on Labor Day, but nothing like I was expecting.

One thing that did happen, though, was that some person just randomly threw a banana on the floor at the beginning of my lane, and naturally, someone else stepped on it.  I never saw the person throw it down, which is strange.  No one slipped or anything, but it was nasty cleaning up.  I think they had taken a bite out of it, too.  Bleck.

Well, that’s it.  Next post will prolly be something about the monitor, or the desk.  Or maybe even school or something.  I dunno.

And just to be different (as John has noticed previously), I’m not going to end this blog post with a smiley.

It’s been so long since I’ve posted. I’ve been busy with getting school stuff settled, shopping, working, and trying to relax in between.

I got my draft schedule for Cross last week, and it was missing a course, and it had me enrolled in two classes I totally didn’t sign up for. I finally got that straightened out with a guidance counselor, and just need to talk to the ISSP coordinator when school starts again about my ISSP courses.

I went clothesshopping today; I got a couple new pairs of jeans, and two nice winter/fall shirts. I’m going to go back at some point soon and get more shirts and pants, but I’m still not sure when.

Oh! I also got my new phone. I ordered a Samsung Sync last week, and it showed up here yesterday! It’s one of the nicest phones of its kind that I’ve used. It’s got a nice, clean UI (with -awesome- sound effects), it’s light, small, sounds good on calls, etc. Also, it’s my first 3G phone, so that’s pretty exciting. I love how fast it is compared to my old phone.

Anyway, just thought I’d give you all an update. Hopefully, I’ll keep this blag going well through the school year.

Until next time. :)

For the past few days, I’ve been slowly getting better from that head cold I had last week. I’m finally down to the point where I just have the occasional cough or have to blow my nose. Woot!

I finished my internship at Yale on Thursday last week. I’m kinda bummed about not having to go in, but at least I’ve got a couple weeks to myself before school starts again.

Stop and Shop has been pretty calm this week, knock on wood. We’re starting a buncha stuff this week; new logo, colors, etc. The customer appreciation coupons came out today, and they weren’t yet active in the coupon database. I think that’s straightened out by now…hopefully.

Well, that’s all for now. I can’t think of anything else worth mentioning on here. Just felt like writing a quick update after my short absence. :)

I haven’t written much here ’cause I’ve been really sick. I caught something my sister had earlier this week (terrible head cold), and I’ve been sleeping a lot since yesterday.

I had a great idea for a long blag post, but I kinda lost the idea after last night.  :|

I’ll write it here if I can remember what it was about.  But until then… -bleh-.