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Re: the Strangeness that is my life

PostPosted: Mon Nov 06, 2017 6:05 pm
by salamanca
Hot Topic is looping movie trailers on the TV in their window.

Star Wars planets, Asgard, and Wakanda all look real similar when viewed I'm succession.

Re: the Strangeness that is my life

PostPosted: Tue Nov 07, 2017 7:20 pm
by daundelyon
On Friday, we received an email notifying us that there would be work done with the company servers/software over the weekend. We joked about which system would crash come Monday.
We should not have laughed.
On Sunday night, a fairly powerful storm rolled through town.
On Monday, I arrived at work and noticed the sign on the side of the building was blinking. Not good. I get inside, and the security lady tells me that the elevators aren't working, and the stairwells have had to have the security doors propped open because the passkey system isn't working.
That was the tip of the iceberg. Half the building lights were out, multiple computers wouldn't turn on, those that did couldn't access any of our systems, and the phones went down. Eventually IT came around and made us unplug everything, with strict orders not to plug anything in until given specific permission.
We did pretty much nothing productive from 7 am to 1:30 pm. We sat around and talked and ate Tim Bits (supervisors ran out and got coffee and sugar to prevent mutiny-the coffee maker wasn't working either), got told to take an hour and a half for lunch so people went out and went shopping and ran errands. One of my coworkers spent several hours in the lobby because she uses a walker and couldn't get up the stairs.
It was ridiculous. The only person on my team who actually got anything done was on an onsite visit in Cincinnati.

Re: the Strangeness that is my life

PostPosted: Tue Nov 07, 2017 9:00 pm
by salamanca
Looking back, it will be remembered as " the best day ever".


So, I'm at work and Mark calls with a question about a terrain feature in Altamira. After a call or two back and forth, we get that resolved and i see a news update ony phone which never happens because nothing g ever happens where I live.

Turns out that it is something near where I live. It's on the property around the corner that pretty much bumps into the back of my acreage. Used to be a junkyard buy some guy bought it a few years back, spent the money to clean it up to EPA standards and never did anything with it...or so everyone thought.

Today, the DEA and local Sheriff seized 5 million worth of pot he was growing in the building on the site. Factoring the years hr has had it since the clean up, I guess I know how he paid for that now. Shame I wasn't home to watch the helicopters and whatnot.

Re: the Strangeness that is my life

PostPosted: Thu Nov 16, 2017 12:34 pm
by salamanca
So, the mall muzak is set for every other song is Christmas. So we get holiday song, pop hit from a couple years ago, holiday song, Nickelback, holiday song, American idol song, etc.

Today we got back to back Taylor Swift. "Last Christmas" and "We are Never Getting Back Together". A certain uplifting combo of depression and heartbreak.

Re: the Strangeness that is my life

PostPosted: Wed Nov 22, 2017 7:52 pm
by salamanca
Someone has set up a table to demo and sell kitchen knives in the middle of the mall on black Friday. No way this can go wrong.

Re: the Strangeness that is my life

PostPosted: Wed Nov 22, 2017 10:43 pm
by Lady Grace
What brand, if I can ask?

Re: the Strangeness that is my life

PostPosted: Wed Nov 22, 2017 11:32 pm
by salamanca
Will have to check when I go in tomorrow night.

Got the 5 pm-1am shift followed by 6am-3pm Friday. With a 58 minute round trip travel time, I am just gonna stay up and hang out. May get some boardgaming in Saturday after that 9 hour shift though. (Assuming I am 1- awake and 2- not stabbed over the discount price of XXX Charades).

Re: the Strangeness that is my life

PostPosted: Thu Nov 23, 2017 4:52 pm
by salamanca
Cutco cutlery to answer Grace.

Re: the Strangeness that is my life

PostPosted: Fri Nov 24, 2017 5:34 pm
by salamanca
Survived 22 hours in the mall. Nobody got stabbed with a kitchen knife that I will admit to.

Sold a lot of really lame games on sale cheap. Was mostly uneventful and dwindling in traffic soaybe the powers that be will finally sober up and return to reasonable hours next year. (As if)

Re: the Strangeness that is my life

PostPosted: Fri Dec 01, 2017 8:16 pm
by salamanca
Just sold a copy of Ticket to Ride while driving down Route 20.

Yeah, was on the way home when the boss called and put a customer on the phone.

Can't imagine how weird things must be from his point of view.

Re: the Strangeness that is my life

PostPosted: Wed Dec 20, 2017 9:47 am
by salamanca
Ok gang, you have 4 days, 15 hours, 30 is minutes until Christmas. That is about the length of Origins ( and you know how fast that goes by). So get that shopping done.

The new candy store in the mall had a very nice bycicle/cart to ride around and not sell stuff off of (vendor and food license rules precluded selling candy from it without an extra form they forgot to apply for).
Well, somebody hit it with something. Back tire has more bends in it than one of Mark's plots. Train driver says it wasn't her ( which I believe) Maintenance guys say they never hit it with a riding floor polisher (I am less inclined to trust that claim). I doubt it was a passing pair of teens just because it takes a lot of effort to warp a tire that bad but you never know. Security refuses to comment. Still need to solve this as we have a pool. It lasted 19 days, got used 5 times. Good investment.

Have had the normal assortment of weird requests. I will not repeat most of them here as they are that wrong. Among the less offensive: "actual photos of actual Angels", " Mug shots of random criminals", current pictures of Britney Spears in swimsuits", "current pics of Betty White is swimsuits" (same guy), "extended middle fingers on a desk calendar", and " garbage dumps".

Re: the Strangeness that is my life

PostPosted: Mon Jan 15, 2018 9:41 pm
by salamanca
Well, corporate office has topped itself for bad plans.

We got notice at 4 pm Friday to close one of our booths on Monday night (tonight) with instructions to transfer all product to our main booth.

Now, it should be noted that my lazy boss decided to jump the gun on that and close Sunday to be able to tear down at 6 pm instead of 9pm. (I endorse this in theory) bit iteamt scrambling with 2 days notice to assemble a crew to do the work.

Problem 1- most of my crew quit late in the year. The remaining staff has physical issues that means no heavy lifting.
Problem 2- three of my "go to" helpers are currently out of town on vacations.
Problem 3- Sunday was the local 12th night feast so that meant all my Rennie pals had plans.

I had 2 people show. We did a great job.

So today, the boss shows up at 6 and has just gotten a call to close up the main booth TOMORROW! 27 hours notice. And all that junk from the other booth will need to be inventoried a second time and dealt with again. The good news is the Rennie's are free tomorrow so I have a bit more help. (And 3 times the work). Who the hell thinks you can hire in a labor crew on 24 hours notice for a one time job?
May need to spend my tax return to go to Texas and knock some heads together

Re: the Strangeness that is my life

PostPosted: Mon Jan 15, 2018 9:45 pm
by salamanca
Unrelated to that rant, local news station had an article about the local basketball team wearing special warm up shirts on their news app. It may have the worst headline ever.

"Cavaliers wear special MLK day shooting shirts"

I cannot be the only person who interpreted that to mean something other than a shirt they wear while shooting warm up shots before the game.

Re: the Strangeness that is my life

PostPosted: Thu Jan 18, 2018 12:06 am
by salamanca
Well, that went as poorly as expected. The team did good work. Had a good number of good people. Then the boss "helped"

Turns out that apparently "girls can't lift boxes". So after everything in terms of merchandise got packed up, he paid all the ladies for their work and sent them home. (Just as my crew of 3 hardy guys were finishing packing and palletizing the first kiosk shelving unit). Since he was handing out money, he paid the guys at the same time.

We still had about an hour and a half of work ahead of us to get the second kiosk broken into components and off the sales floor but these are good guys who won't run off as soon as the cash is in hand...

Except he paid them the same as the ladies who were now leaving. Personally, I can't blame them. I would have walked away too.

So today I took the second unit apart with "help" from the boss. Outside of having a second set of hands for lifting, he was not of any use. A d12 is more useful. The man could not even manage to cut zip ties off the shelves correctly. (Each shelf is secured with 4 ties, he missed 25%).

Tomorrow I will sit and wait for a truck that may or may not have been scheduled...there is confusion on that. At least he will not be present.

Re: the Strangeness that is my life

PostPosted: Sun Jul 22, 2018 8:05 pm
by salamanca
So the local renn faire got invaded by some LARP type troupe today all wearing Ork masks and marching together with musical instruments...

That's right, they were an Ork-chestra.

Freaking genius.

Re: the Strangeness that is my life

PostPosted: Mon Sep 17, 2018 11:54 am
by salamanca
Was at a wedding reception this weekend. Location was a rural township community center.

In front of the place is a little league field. Somebody had hacked the scoreboard and left a message on if for all passing by to see... "Send Nudes".

1- kind of surprised nobody in charge of the place has removed it.

2- it was perfect for the occasion as that is a running joke the wedding couple has been using for years. (And no, they did not do it)

Re: the Strangeness that is my life

PostPosted: Thu Sep 20, 2018 2:32 pm
by salamanca
Ok, this one is weird. (And that is me saying weird)

So I went over to game with some friends last night but was a little early. So I took the most backroad route possible to burn some extra time. On my way, I passed one of the small cemeteries in town. This particular cemetery happens to be the location of a couple bucks f high school friends who died in military service. And as I glance over while passing, I notice a huge pile of flowers stacked next to my friends end Sean's grave. ( Which is very easy to find as it has a statue of a soldier that is about 4 feet tall and next to it is his father in law's that is shaped like a full sized granite east chair).

Now keep in mind that I live in a very, very small town. If somebody dies, you hear about it. Dozens of bouquets don't get left without a reason and families get buried together around here. So I am suddenly worried something happened to one of his siblings, parents or kids and I didn't hear about it. (Plus it looks like a shrine when a younger person dies in an accident)

So I stopped to go check. I pull up and it takes all of 5 paces to see the headstone... It's Benjamin Orr... Vocalist and keyboard player for the 80's band "The Cars".

Nobody except family knew he was out here until they were inducted in the rock wall and one of the TV stations did a story on it, now it's a shrine.

I had completely forgotten Sean's brother is married to Ben's niece.

Now the weird part. With the mystery solved in less time than it took for you to read that, I get back in the car, shift into reverse, and as I am starting to back out of the cemetery, I realize The Cars are playing "Just What I Needed" on the radio. (I don't mind you coming here, and wasting all my time...).

I did not turn the channel. The chances of another Cars song playing would have been too freaky.

Re: the Strangeness that is my life

PostPosted: Tue Sep 25, 2018 8:51 pm
by salamanca
Ran into a guy at McDonald's today who recognized me from High School. I have not seen this guy in 30 years. His face was vaguely familiar and once he told me his first name it clicked. He was about 3 years behind me and I doubt I talked to him more than three times back then. (He was also a foot shorter and probably a 100 pounds lighter back then too).

I no sooner leave and stop at the gas station and the guy pumping gas across from me asks, "didn't you go to school with my Dad?". Turns out I did and this guy in his mid twenties remembers meeting me from a day of golfing out at my course 10 years ago.

I either need to stopaking such favorable impressions or start aging.

Re: the Strangeness that is my life

PostPosted: Wed Oct 10, 2018 7:08 pm
by salamanca
It is October 10... I am sitting in the mall waiting for closing time so I can assemble the calendar kiosk and start another holiday season.

The mall Christmas decorations are currently crowding the staging area the mall uses for upcoming projects.

That means the Christmas decorations are the next project on the "to do" list.

Givee back Halloween and Thanksgiving you capitalist dogs!

Re: the Strangeness that is my life

PostPosted: Mon Oct 15, 2018 1:38 pm
by salamanca
Well, the game booth is now operational. I have Catan base game, Sushi Go and a bunch of stuff that really isn't worth playing. It's a very depressing collection of junk. I have been overloaded with trouble and memory games tied to Disney entities. And enough lame "adult " games to make me think I am working at Spencers.

Re: the Strangeness that is my life

PostPosted: Tue Oct 16, 2018 9:15 am
by Black Jack Rackham
You know, I wish my life was 1/10th as interesting as your's, Dave.

Re: the Strangeness that is my life

PostPosted: Tue Oct 16, 2018 9:21 am
by salamanca
That is what you think. But it never really leads to benefits. Weirdness magnet doesn't even get you a tax deduction.

Re: the Strangeness that is my life

PostPosted: Thu Oct 18, 2018 9:37 am
by salamanca
So all the "cool" kids at the mall make a habit of running around in black band t-shirts. Nothing new there. But the current trend is to wear classic bands so what we have is a bunch of kids wearing shirts for bands that broke up 25-40 years before they were born. (Lots of Doors and Misfits and Zeppelin).

I want in on this trend, anybody know where I can get a Glenn Miller or Jimmy Dorsey T-SHIRT?

Re: the Strangeness that is my life

PostPosted: Thu Oct 18, 2018 10:19 am
by Lady Grace
FOUND ONE!

http://www.coolculturetees.com/view/885 ... er-t-shirt

(that actually looks pretty cool)

Re: the Strangeness that is my life

PostPosted: Fri Oct 19, 2018 3:40 pm
by salamanca
Sweet.