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I got myself a 20 GB iPod. Not the Photo, like I was originally pondering, because I realized that in the end I don't really need a shitload of music on my iPod. I find my iPod to be exceptional, and I don't see the issues with iTunes that people have reported to me. It DID, however, totally fuck over my siblings' computer, which is going to mean that there will now be 3 Windows 2000 installations on their computer. So sad. :( My purchase, with a AppleCare thing, an iTrip, and the iPod, totalled $368.50, of which my mom paid $68.50 since the paychecks I desposited Sunday hadn't been credited to my account yet.
I have work and school tomorrow. Oh joy. At least this is the final week of regular classes. Next week is final exams. I've also asked for all but Saturday of that week off, which means I will FINALLY get to RELAX. Whenever I've had a day off, I've had to focus some of it on school. Once school's out, until Fall I'll be feeling a lot less stressed, and I need that.
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 It's the Saitek Gaming Keyboard. The keyboard I had before, the Logitech Cordless Elite, was nowhere to be found when I went to Best Buy to get a replacement today. Instead, I saw this beauty, which is illuminated very well, and also features a very soft, yet at the same time sturdy key press feel (which I am VERY picky about). It makes hardly any noise, and the Command Pad that's attached to it is great for all sorts of functions, and the program that is used to rpogram it is very easy and clean. I've tried it out on CS:S, and it works beautifully. I would try O2Jam, but of all the nights for it to be down, it chose tonight. Being that the only keyboard I've been able to play O2Jam with is the shitty keyboard that Iv'e done nothing but complain about ever since I was forced to use it, using this keyboard for O2Jam should be a better experience. In other news, I have 9 days left to finish my research paper. This is freaking me out a lot more than it used to; I used to wait until, say, 3 days later to freak. At this point I think I'm probably overreacting, and I should be able to finish it fine. I'm basically kicking myself for not starting it about a week and a half ago when it was assigned. Spreading it out over 3 weeks would make the workload seem even less than spreading it out over 10 days, which shouldn't be too much of a workload per day... if I can get myself to do it each day.
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ARGH. I just spent 5 FUCKING HOURS, the longest it's ever taken, even during christmas season, closing the goddamned store. We have our new district manager coming to visit tomorrow, so the store had to be really good. We also had to have a shitload of "junk carts", which was basically random shit that we didn't feel like putting away at the time, put away. That was the main bulk of what took so long.
The other part was that right when the store closed, we had 7 people. At 9:30 PM, one of them had to leave, and another had to leave a short while later, since they were both highschoolers and their parents wouldn't let them work late. Two other highschoolers left at midnight because they needed sleep, and the guy who does bikes, who rides one to work, was sent home around that time since Cheryl, the manager didn't want him around that late. Being the idiot I am, I volunteered to stay, and it ended up taking until 1:15 AM to get the store completely closed. And we even hid some of the shit, since we both decided we were DONE for the night.
I come home to find a note from my brother saying he spilled soda on my Logitech wireless keyboard. Usually keyboards that have just been spilled on act funny, but the fact that he left the battery case off and in a place I can't find it, AND took the batteries out, infuriated me. He has an account on my computer to play WoW. If it had been any other night he'd done this I probably wouldn't be mad. But after having to take 10 minutes to parallel fucking park, I am in NO MOOD for this shit. I've changed the password on his account to something he'll never guess. Until I'm not mad at him, it's staying that way. Call me an asshole brother if you want, but I'm just fucking sick of life today.
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I had a productive day at work today. I got a whole bunch of stuff done, and I was prepared to do more after we had a little meeting (which usually ends with "Go home"). Adam, the manager at the time, told me "No, you'd be leaving after I said go home anyway, so you don't have anything left to do!" We kinda got into a minor argument about it... nothing real serious, I was just trying to make the point that I really would stay late if I needed to.
I'm downloading Spike Lee's movie, Do the Right Thing. I loved the first half that was shown during English yesterday, but I don't feel like going back there for the second half. He's not taking attendance tomorrow, but he did say that if we didn't make it, we needed to find the movie elsewhere, since it's going to be on the final exam. I'm also in the process of writing a paper that's due Tuesday, since I work from
8 PM to 3 AM Friday
3 PM to close Saturday
Probably all day Sunday
Which means i have NO FREE TIME later in the week for ANYTHING.
In other news, I really fucking want a PSP. I'm sooooo ready to spend money on a game, but I need to stop myself. I should get a game AFTER school lets out.
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I hate school. I have to read the first 3 acts of Othello, and while I have most of that done, there's another assignment that would boost my work (which is currently none) on a paper that's due in 8 days, AND it's a required assignment. However, the school library's website, for whatever reason, doesn't let me log into the databases that I HAVE TO USE when I use the information that it tells me to use to log in. I have no idea what the freaking problem is, all I know is that this stupid website is cheating me out of a grade. At least the paper should be managable within 7 days, but it means I have to fucking do some of the work in the school library, and I hate doing homework at school. I just... don't like the idea.
In other news, I'm having trouble remaining unbanned from a CS server I've played at for 2 years. Apparently the server has decided it hates me, and keeps banning me. Today someone was trying to ban someone else, and the server thought it was me and kickbanned me. :/
We also surprised my dad at work today by bringing him Subway, since it was his birthday. I'd given him a giant stuffed yellow chick peep for Easter, since he LOVES Peeps, and I saw a smaller pink bunny peep beanbag in the gas station on the way there, and couldn't resist. He was really happy that we came and surprised him.
I've also disgusted myself with my apathy towards being productive over the past two days. I really honestly think I'm suffering from burnout, between work and school I just never feel like I have any time for myself. I was really looking forward to these past two days, but they seem to have sucked all the energy out of me, even though they're supposed to give me more. I have no clue why, and I hope it's just tonight. Probably just anxiety over missing a homework assignment.
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I arrived at the store 10 minutes early today, expecting to fight through a line of customers. There might as well have been tumbleweeds floating by... the front of the store was completely devoid of customers. By the time we opened, we had two kids with their families come in and buy the PSP. Then, about, 20 minutes later, we sold our next one.
This article is not going to be nearly as in-depth as I wished it would've been. I was going to comment on what I was hearing about the PSP, what types of people were buying it, and all that jazz. There just wasn't enough activity around it. Everyone who came in for a PSP bought one. That just wasn't many people. I sold about 5 to 10 times as many Game Boy games as PSP games, and even sold a PS2 and a presell for Pokemon Emerald. There was more non-PSP purchasing going on than PSP purchasing by a factor of at least 3, but probably more.
The rest of the stores in the region weren't faring any better. By the time we'd sold 9, some stores had sold 11 (the highest number), some stores had sold about 3, and one store sold zero. Between 12 PM and 2 PM, we sold 1 PSP, and that was to an employee. In fact, 3 of the 12 purchases by the time I left were to employees.
You know what I think did the PSP in? The price. The price is simply waaaaaay over many people's budgets. People saying they want one is different than saying "I want to buy one". I think most of the people that the PSP appealed to were gamers exclusively, and that's why EB and places like that sold out of presells. People think of getting their games there first. There are four stores in our shopping center: A WalMart, a Target, a Best Buy, and my Toys R Us. If the sole reason for us not selling anything was because the other stores were getting hit first, then eventually we would have had people come in saying we were their last hope, right? Wrong. No one ever showed up with that, they had simply decided to try our store first. We recieved 3 calls about the PSP, compared to 20 on a bad day during Christmas season.
This leads me to another kink in the PSP's launch. It's in March. Hindsight is 20/20, and a lot of people were expecting Sony to sell more than the typical March product, but the fact remains that there isn't much reason aside from Easter for people to be spending a lot of money, and a $250 product is a rather big Easter present. I'd also like to comment that the black plastic, while really really really really nice looking, appears to be the most fingerprintable substance on Earth. It looks nice now, but after a month it'll probably look like crap.
I do think that PSP sales will pick up once people get paid (a lot of people's paychecks come in today). However, the fact that there wasn't nearly as much pandemonium as with the DS indicates that the PSP is not off to a good start.
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I spent about 15 minutes helping this one lady at the tail end of my workday; she was asking for Four Swords Adventures for the GBA, which, as far as I know, does not exist. I spent about 10 minutes of my time with her talking to her, and her husband, about what exactly it was that she was looking for; when I thought I'd figured it out (Link to the Past for GBA?) I checked for it on the computer; it said there were 5 "on the floor", which means "either out on a shelf or in the booth and not shelved, which means it's fucking impossible to find". I told the lady that I may or may not be able to find the game; I suggested that if I can't find it, she should try online, to which she replied "But I'm here right now! I don't want to pay shipping, I'm here now!"... after checking, I said "Sorry, ma'am, but we don't have it." She said rather snippily, "OK." and dropped the other 5 games she'd picked onto the nearest shelf. I replaced those games in the correct places, then wandered outside to wait for my mom to pick me up. We caught eye contact for a split second, by pure chance, and so she approached me and said "Listen, I just told your service desk that I was about to spend $250 in your store, and now I'm taking my money elsewhere." I turned to her and said "OK, have a nice day, ma'am!" and walked off. I was now ROYALLY pissed at this lady, who was not only throwing a fit like a five year old, but had some of the worst acne and facial hair I have ever seen on a woman. I went back into the store to call my mom, since she was late; the phone happens to be at the service desk, so the person that got the complaint told me that they needed to talk to me when I was done with the phone call. I finished, and she asked me if I had given the lady a *shrug* attitude. I said no, but afterwards my mom reminded me that I do shrug when talking to people sometimes; I talk with my hands a lot, and sometimes a shrug becomes part of that. So now I am going to have to either speak with my manager or with the person who got the complaint, so I can clear things up. Today just royally pissed me off. :/ Oh, but someone came in looking for WoW today... while I commended whoever she was getting it for's taste in games (in my head, of course), I mentioned that there was a monthly fee, just in case she didn't know... which she didn't. That was fun to see the look of "Ooooooh... well, he's not getting THAT present!" look on her face. Well, fun and sad at the same time. It was fun because I genuinely helped her (and saved our store the trouble of not telling her about it later), but sad because that's one less WoW player. :( I'm Feeling: pissy
Listening To: Yoko Kanno feat. Maaya Sakamoto - Tail Song
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Today's work shift is going to so rock, as did Sunday. On Sunday's shift, I spent most of the time organizing our back room, which, on that day, was barely navigable. There was nowhere to walk back there, so I took it upon myself to spend most of the shift back there cleaning it out. By the end of the day, there was a hallway. IT WAS WALKABLE. My manager loved my job so much that he asked me to do that again for the entire shift. So I get to spend all day on my ass, away from customers (for the most part) making it easy to serve more customers later. HOORAH! MY OCD IS USEFUL! I'm not going to have much sleep beforehand, though. :| I'm preoccupied with KEN JENNINGS BEING ON LETTERMAN LATER. God I hate Letterman, but i have to see Ken Jennings and whether they acknowledge that he lost today. =o *runs off* As another note, I think I'll finally get around to making new usericons. <3 screencaps. I'm Feeling:  lethargic
Listening To: The TV
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I have a shift in somewhere between 10 and 12 hours (I can't quite remember). Be it the caffeine or the complete lack of caring I have for actually getting a good night's sleep, I'm up late enough that depending on when work is, I'll be going in with quite the crappy sleep beforehand. Also, my boss is cool. He gets me to get work done; basically, I'll be around him and he'll tell me to do something. I'm slowly learning what needs to get done, and occasionally I'll fix something before he tells me to. The problem is that when he leaves, so does my productivity. The guy that's been there a lot is REALLY FREAKING LAZY, and if he's not told to do something, he won't get it done. We closed on Friday, and between his laziness and my overwhelming tiredness, we got basically nothing important done. Today I organized some shit, but basically I did nothing of real import once my boss left; again. My boss himself doesn't even think he's doing too good of a job; I'd say he is, given that he gets me to do work when he's around. I think the problem is that our store director kind of hides in the office all day, randomly popping out to tell people what they're doing wrong. For such a hands-on profession, he really has a hands-off approach towards doing it, and that bugs me. At this point, I basically only have my paycheck as a reason to continue working there. The girl that started working when I did is LEAVING, and she is soooooo nice and the only person in our whole group that gets the place organized. It's just part of her nature, whereas the rest of us just kind of ignore the organizational faults of our section. By the way, Donkey Konga shows you who's the bright gamers and who're the stupid ones; people of all ages come in, ignore the directions for the game, and then get terrible scores on the game and assume it's broken. The ones that do well have a good time, and occasionally buy the damn thing. Jeez, I have so much to complain about regarding video games, especially since I'm selling them to mostly mothers of kids under 10. Working at, say, EBGames would be a whole lot better. It was a breath of fresh air to see a kid ask for an M-rated game, about age 11, and have the adult with him not care. Previously it's only been the other extreme; parents who will only buy an E-rated game. I've explained to a couple of people that the T rating has multiple extremes, like the PG rating on movies; it's heartbreaking to see parents not buy The Incredibles for their kids simply because it's rated T, when the only reason they're considering buying the game in the first place, and it was rated PG. :| </rant> I'm Feeling: tired
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Katamari Damacy is THE WEIRDEST FUCKING GAME EVER. It's like taking an acid trip by proxy. I just.... can't describe it, it's just so off the wall. Anyone here who owns a PS2, BUY THIS GAME NOW.
Regarding work... it's sucked. Totally. My feet have hurt every day that I finish, although the pain is kind of diminishing today... meh... closing today sucked ass, because the entire store is theoretically supposed to help, but it was about me and 2 other people actually working. All the freaking highschool kids did nothing but scoot around on these scooters that were lyin around. :| I was SO pissed when they finally let us go. Got an extra half hour of paid time out of it though.
I work the entire day of the DS launch... this means that, because my manager is buying a DS, that I will be able to get my hands on a Ds and play it for the first time tomorrow. WOOT.
We're only getting 48 DSes, so we're most likely going to be out in about an hour. :| Apparently no one's getting many, they didn't make enough. ;___; At least I get to play around with one today. ^_____^
Oh, and my dad got me a new chair today. Previously I've sat at the computer at a lower level than where the keyboard and mouse lay, because our other office chairs broke and I was sitting in a lounge chair. >_>
Okay, bed now. Have an early shift tomorrow. ;_;
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Well, work on Saturday was fun. It started out as an orientation, but due to the retardedly easy nature of the "quizzes" involved, we finished rather quickly, so we ended up being asked to work for a half hour. For me it turned into an hour and a half, because I started out working out front and moved onto the "R" Zone, which is what the video game section is called. I learned the ropes and found out I was to be doing everything except the cash register; apparently I'm not even supposed to be in the Rzone until I've worked there for three months, but the only real reason is becuase you can't man the cash register until that long. Since I'm a seasonal worker, and they probably need all the help they can get, I got lucky. Fortunately, walking around helping people isn't going to be too much of a problem. The only problem that I can see is the fact that it's such a tiny section. I'm gonna be making a lot of circles. At least if it ever gets into a lull I can play the Donkey Konga demo.
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This is the best movie I've seen in a looooooooong time. It's debatable whether it's better than Finding Nemo, but I think that while Finding Nemo is destined to become a kids' classic, The Incredibles played out more like a balls-out action movie more than it did a kids movie. Kids might enjoy the explosions, but the movie itself plays very well to a more mature audience; injokes that only they would get (such as an argument about driving directions that sounds VERY close to something a real husband and wife would do), and situations that some adults might want to spare their children (Death is never seen on screen, but alluded to constantly). The movie plays out like a Bond film in a lot of ways; evil volcano lair, evil villain, super cool chase scene at the end... except the villian is so freakishly weird that you wonder if he's missing his meds.
All in all, I ADORED this movie. EVERYONE GO SEE IT NOW.
Oh, btw, happy b-day Andrew. I have no moneys for a present for you, so it'll have to wait. :P
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