Not on the ball

This is actually about something else that happened on Wednesday, but I forgot about it when I was making that post. So here it is. I think this deserves its own post anyway.

So on Wednesday, in between leaving the college and going to work, I mentioned I had lunch with Dad - we went to Arby's (where, incidentally, I actually got a job several months before getting my job at Shop Rite, but I quit before my first day because they wanted me to shave my beard clean off), got a couple of roast beef sandwiches, and ate in the plaza parking lot. Now, I don't recall if I've mentioned this or not, but for the past couple of weeks, Colo and I have been trying to track down a Wii system - we want to buy one before Super Smash Bros. Brawl comes out on March 9th. So since there's a Gamestop in this plaza, and since we've also been trying to find some good new Gamecube controllers, I figured I'd stop in and kill two birds with one stone.

I set my sandwich aside and walked into a different world – a world where customer service did not exist, ringing phones were a mystic enigma, and a man with a hand scanner could do as he pleased by virtue only of said hand scanner.

There were three or four other customers walking around the store, and a single employee – the guy with the hand scanner – was crawling around the walls scanning every game on the shelves one by one, apparently taking inventory. The phone was ringing. It kept ringing for about five minutes. Nobody picked it up. Apparantly Handscanny (as we’ll call him throughout the rest of this story) was the only employee in the store. I walked over to where the Gamecube controllers were, checked them out, and then did my best to look interested in something. As Handscanny skittered past, he asked if I needed anything, I asked if they had any Wiis in stock, he said no, and I walked out, slightly dazed by the egregious lapse in phone-answering that I had just witnessed taking place at what was supposed to be a business establishment.

I called Colo about the controllers I had seen up for sale, since they looked like basically what we were looking for, and he agreed that I should go back in and buy four of them. I walked back into the Gamestop.

Now there was only one other customer in the store with me, who appeared to be basically just browsing. I picked up four of the controllers, walked to the checkout desk, and set them down. Then I waited. Handscanny was now crawling about the lower shelves, apparently paying no attention to the world outside of his handscanning sphere. The phone was ringing again. It went on for another five minutes while I stood there uncomfortably and fought the urge to pick it up myself, then finally stopped. A moment later it started up again, and went on for its third five-minute shift. During this, Handscanny turned to me long enough to tell me he would be right with me, and then went back to handscanning. A couple minutes later (the phone still ringing), he finally stood up and walked around behind the desk to answer the damn phone. As he passed, I heard the single stupidest thing I’ve ever heard any employee of any business utter in front of a customer:

“Christ, you’d think when you don’t pick it up they wouldn’t call back!”

I swear to God, those were his exact words. It was all I could do to stop myself from replying sharply with something to the effect of “and you’d think when they CALLED, you’d PICK IT UP, you jackass!”

As he finished up the call and finally took my purchase, whining about what a stupid question the customer on the phone had just asked him, all I could think about was how quickly I would fire this guy if I owned this store.

Now, I’m sure that taking inventory was something that was part of this guy’s job and something that he needed to do, but if you’re the only guy on shift and you’ve got customers, you need to get your priorities straight. Answering the goddamn phone is more important than taking inventory. A customer WAITING TO BUY SOMETHING for about ten minutes is more important than taking inventory. If there had been any other Gamestop employees in the store to see this guy’s behavior, or if I myself had decided to call and complain about him, his ass would have been canned so fast he would have been left wondering where his precious barcode just went. And I’ll tell you for sure I’m not going to bother calling that store if I’m ever looking to buy something.

Whoever decided to leave him in charge of the store made a BIG mistake.

Victoly!

Well! Today was pretty good at the college - I found out from Professor Hillyer that Mr. Homa got us a person to do layout for the Racket! It's one of his students, too, so they'll be working with him directly, which is good. So we've got everyone we need! Our new business manager has already sold hundreds of dollars worth of advertisements, we've got dozens of articles; way more than we need, and all by the deadline; and we've got our layout guy! So that's all coming together wonderfully. I stayed after lunch, too, and did some more editing for the articles that came in this week. It looks like some really good and varied stuff. I'm quite pleased with the way things are going!

Also, I finally tried something new at the cafe - instead of my usual sausage egg & cheese roll, I had a bacon cheeseburger, since I've heard they're really good there. Which I can now confirm - they are. Nonetheless, I don't think anything beats Eddie's breakfast sandwiches, so I'll be going back to the usual next week. At least I can say I tried something else now.

After leaving the school, I had lunch with Dad and then went to work at 5:00 PM. Work honestly started out kinda badly today - I started out the day by telling one of my managers that he was nuts and then realizing five minutes later that he was actually right, and after that it kinda went downhill, with me doing one thing wrong after another. Things improved after my break, though; I got to check next to my buddy Kyle, so we chatted things up a bit, and once I relaxed I stopped screwing everything up. And I finally figured out how to do WIC checks on my own! That's actually really good. Those and rainchecks are the two things that confused the hell out of me; my getting them down pat is good for everyone. Now I don't have to call for help every time somebody tries to pay with a WIC check. Yay.

They also let me off early (9:00 PM instead of 9:45 PM), which would have been great if it weren't for the fact that Dad took the car and I had to wait until 9:45 PM for him to pick me up anyway. As it stood, though, it was still nice - I got to sit around in an empty parking lot and enjoy being outside (cold though it may have been), and talk to my family on my cell phone while I waited for Dad to show up.

So yeah, good stuff in the end, as always. Now I just have to see how I did on this morning's biology exam...

Valentine's Day secret mission

So, part two of the "I meant to write about this DAYS ago!" series: Valentine's Day.

Valentine's Day went very well. Augusta had work starting at four, so we couldn't really do anything then (or so I had her believe), and we planned to make up for it on Sunday (or so I had her believe). In reality, I've been planning for more than a week to show up at her house and suprise her, which I did - got up at 7:30 AM to be getting everything together; a dozen roses, a necklace, a CD, et cetera. Then I went offline a bit before noon to "take a shower" and twenty minutes later showed up at her house. What's funny is that later on, I found a post on LGN that she made at just about exactly the time that I was leaving the house saying that she didn't "have anything planned for Valentine's Day, unfortunately."

So I showed up at her house, and her parents answered the door and caught on quickly enough to not tip her off - apparantly, Augusta herself had just gotten out of the shower mere moments before, and was in fact attempting to contact me on Google Talk. Oh, the irony. So her mother told her to put something on and come down, which she did, to find me standing there with roses looking mildly amused. There was much hugging. I have got to say, the look on her face when she first came down was the cutest thing I've ever seen. Imagine if 1,000,000,000 kittens formed into a suprised and happy facial expression. It was like that.

I hung out with Augusta until she had to go to work at 4:00 PM... Cuddled, tickle-fought, talked, went out for lunch... She even bought me a box of my favorite cherry cordials to reciprocate. Which reminds me, thank you, honey. They were good.

Honestly, the best part of the whole deal was just seeing how happy my showing up by suprise made her. I felt really good about pulling it off so well. Gave me a warm, fuzzy feeling inside. I like warm fuzzy feelings. And I don't think I've ever been told I'm "cute" so many times in a four-hour period before. Man, I do love that girl.

So my Valentine's Day was spent in the company of my sweetheart. I think that's a win, right?

STRANGER times at WCCC

Okay. Holy crap.

I meant to post on Wednesday, then on Thursday (with Wednesday's intended post combined into it), then I meant to post both of them on Friday, then Saturday... today, damnit, I'm finally going to get this crap written. XD

So first, Wednesday.

Wednesday, the weather sucked amazingly - ice and rain and icy rain and snow and slush and all that stuff you really don't want to have to drive in. But, naturally, I DID have to drive in it, because I have college classes on Wednesdays. Luckily, I remembered to call the college first and make sure they weren't cancelling; not because they were, but because they ended up opening at 10:00 AM instead of 8:00 AM like usual. So I went back to bed for a bit and then got on my way at around quarter after nine.

Well, at that point, I was vastly underestimating the craptasticness of the driving conditions I was in, and it took me all of maybe thirty seconds before I managed to swerve my car into a 360-spin going downhill - two times, the whole way around, into a snowbank facing the wrong way.

As soon as the car stopped in the bank, my thought process was as follows:
"Woah."
"Oh damnit, I can't go forward."
"Jesus, I hope I don't have to call Dad and tell him this..."
"Oh, thank you, car... I can go backwards."
After that, I got my self pointing the right way again, and continued, slowly, to WCCC.

I reached the college without further incident, and pulled in at the same time as Raven. She told me to go in ahead of her while she called her mom to let her know she had arrived safely. However, when she came in, she informed me that, at the exact moment we were pulling in, the college had changed their late opening from 10:00 AM to noon. Needless to say, this was at least mildly aggravating. Why the hell couldn't they have just done that to start with? Now we were there two hours early for no reason!

After a little griping, we went up to an empty computer classroom where we worked on one of Raven's speeches for her public speaking class and I did some editing work for the Campus Racket. Then we screwed around on the internet for a bit. Then I went to look for Jeebler (or Mr. Jeremy Beeler) to see if he could get me out of that radio class. Turned out he wouldn't be in until noon. Okay. I could live with that. So we hung out, did work, et cetera, et cetera. In all honesty, the college is kind of fun with most of the student population absent and everyone just kinda hanging out and having fun.

So noon came; we decided to go out to lunch at a local diner since all of my classes had been effectively cancelled, and Raven's only classes didn't start until 2:00 PM. Lunch was good, and we got back and I checked for Jeebler again.

Now he was in a meeting until three.

*sigh*

Okay. Did more hanging out. After Raven went off to class, I started downloading some music onto my laptop in the library. At three, I checked again, and FINALLY caught Jeebler, got myself out of the radio class (hooray!), and signed up for the art history PowerPack in April. Cool. Got all that done.

I also ran into Professor Hillyer; she told me to track down Mr. Homa and ask him about getting someone to do layout for the paper. Turned out he wouldn't be in until 5:00 PM. So I hung out until then, talked to people, et cetera. Five came, and I found out it wasn't FIVE, it was actually five THIRTY. Hung out until five THIRTY, and finally found out that... Mr. Homa wasn't showing up. Damnit. So I left him a message and FINALLY went home.

So that was Wednesday. XD

Next I'll write up Thursday, but first I'm posting this separately before I decide to edit it or something.

Strange times at WCCC

Well, today was a weird day at the college. First, in a fundraising competition for United Way between Warren County Community College and Centenary College New Jersey, each school's respective president spent 11:30 AM to 1:00 PM being duct taped to the a wall through student and faculty donations of $1 per foot of tape. Augusta and I each donated for three feet of tape during lunch and got to "stick it to The Man" (the name they gave the event). Really, it was more like sticking The Man to it - "it" being the wall. Somebody put a pink Giants cap on poor Doctor Austin, and they had a piece over his mouth, too (with "Giants rock!" written on it). Needless to say, most people found the whole situation to be endlessly amusing, myself included. At the end of the competition, we contacted Centenary and compared totals - turned out that WCCC won! So that was fun.

After lunch, Augusta normally has a math class at 2:00 PM. However, while we were sitting outside the classroom waiting for it to start, we overheard someone talking to one of her classmates, saying that the class was cancelled today and that the professor that normally teaches it was being replaced. Augusta told me that he was an auditor who sat in on their class a week or two back. Word started to spread pretty quickly, and finally the guy came out and said what was going on. Apparantly the professor was pretty unpopular - not because he was mean or anything, but just because he didn't explain things especially well - and so WCCC decided to fire him. Naturally, this resulted in some of the bitchier students cheering and "good riddance-ing." The auditor was waiting outside the class to tell the students that it was cancelled and to tell the professor that he was being let go.

Now, I don't know that they should have kept this guy if he wasn't teaching well, but regardless, I wasn't too impressed by the way the situation was being handled. First of all, they should have just put a sign up on the classroom door saying that it was cancelled, like they normally do - the students didn't need to know the professor was being fired, or why. But second of all, letting the professor drive down to the college expecting to teach a class and then stopping him in a public hallway to tell him that he's been fired and that he can turn around and go home is a rather shitty way of dealing with things. Augusta and I didn't stick around to see what the auditor actually said to the guy when he came in. I hope none of my employers ever treat me that way.

So Augusta went down to the library, intending to use her newfound free time to do some research for one of her projects, and I went down to my next class, which also was supposed to start at 2:00 PM - intro to radio. There I found Professor Hillyer - my communications professor for the last several semesters - talking to the professor for my radio class. Turns out that the other guys who were in the class all dropped it after the first week, leaving just me in attendence.

Now, before I explain this further, I think need to elaborate a little on this radio class - it's actually more of an internship; class is held once a week, and then there's a "lab" once a week as well, which consists of heading to the radio station where the professor works at 5:00 AM and staying there working with her until 9:00 AM, four hours later. Now, as good as "radio internship" looks on a college transcript or a resume, I was never too thrilled by the whole lab setup for what only counts as a three credit course. Nor was I especially enthusiastic about the class itself.

So anyway, today, I talked to the professor after Hillyer left, and the deal is that she doesn't want to come to the college every week to teach a single student (me), which is of course perfectly reasonable. So she wants to effectively cancel the class portion of the internship, and instead have me come in to the station more than once a week (like two or three times instead). Still at bizarre hours that require me to get up at four in the morning. Now, I just don't want to be devoting all that time to a class that I'm not particularly enjoying so far and don't find to be notably interesting when I also have a job, the school newspaper, and other classes to worry about. So I think I'm almost definitely going to drop radio, and take an art history PowerPack class in April instead, which fulfills the social science elective (which I would be losing by dropping radio) that I need to have in order to graduate in May.

Honestly, if that is what I end up doing, it'll be a huge load off of my shoulders - I tend to do very well in PowerPack classes, and although I'd basically be blowing three weekends in April, after that it would be done and over with, instead of doing this radio thing multiple times a week from now until May. So that's got me feeling altogether more comfortable about the whole situation than I have for the last couple of weeks.

In non-collegiate news, I recently got word that one of my cousins will be coming down from New York this coming Sunday and staying the week, which will be nice - I haven't heard much from her lately, so it'll be good to catch up. And of course, I still can't seem to get in touch with Michael, although I've basically decided that I won't be holding the LGN party until May or June anyway, just because it'll be easier to get everybody together when they don't have classes and coursework to be worrying about.

And most unfortunately, all THREE of my batteries for Cobalt, my laptop, seem to have died simultaneously, rendering me unable to use it without the power cable. I'm hoping Dad will be able to scrounge up another battery or two from the mass of spare computer parts in the attic, but if he can't, honestly, at least it was the batteries and not the power cable. On my last laptop things stopped working the other way around, so I can tell you from experience that good batteries don't mean crap when they're dead and you can't charge them.

Happy yesterday + random musings

Well, I had a rather irritating morning yesterday, but the rest of the day was great. And the irritating wasn't really that bad, in retrospect. I ended up waiting forty-five minutes for a wayward tech guy to fix a printer before I could leave my word processing class in the morning - he never actually did, so in the end we just used a different printer. So that was kind of a waste of time.

After that, though, I spent about an hour at home playing Star Fox Assault and Super Smash Bros. Melee with my little brother, which was fun. At around 11:30 AM, I left for Augusta's. She and I drove to and hung out at the mall for a few hours (where I bought a new pair of Chucks!), then had a really nice dinner, got some ice cream for dessert, and finally drove back to her house and hung out there for the rest of the evening; first digesting our heavy Italian meals, and eventually playing a little co-op in Halo 3. Really great day/night, though. Augusta sounded like she had a lot of fun too, which is of course good. :]

In other news, I have no other real news! I'm working a later shift at work tonight - 5:15 PM to 10:15 PM - but other than that, nothing doing right now. I've spent some time today trying to track down a good torrent download for the Super Smash Bros. Brawl gamerip, which was recently successful. Now we just have to see if the download actually works.

Oh, and I have to remember to burn a copy of Saliva's "Blood Stained Love Story" album for Augusta before we have class Monday morning. I've been meaning to do so for a while, but crap keeps happening that stops me from getting it done. TODAY, I SHALL BURN!

I've also been thinking a little about plans for the next LGN party - always great get-togethers for everyone involved. I like to try to plan them for while we have some of the cousins over, so perhaps for spring break? Othewise it'd most likely be better to wait until the end of the current semester, which means not until May. Hm. Something to ponder, I suppose. One of the key points in any LGN party planning exploits is always actually getting in touch with Mike to see what he's up to and when he can come down. After all, it's not a party without everyone's favorite demented co-admin!

Slice of life

So let's see, a bit about me? I've never done much writing about myself - wasn't able to keep a journal for more than a week or two at a time, never really blogged before... So I can't say that this will necessarily come out so well. Nonetheless, I couldn’t think of anything to complain about at the moment, so I figure I might as well offer proof that I’m not just some ornery old bastard.

See, the funny thing is, despite the impression you might have gotten from my Grammar rant, I’m actually quite the optimist. People can suck, but you can at least ignore the sucky ones.

Current life for me is good. I’ve been attending Warren County Community College for the last few years, where I’m having a great time (and managing to learn stuff while still doing well), and I’ll be graduating from there this coming May with my associate’s degree in communications. After that, I’ll be spending two years at Rowan to earn my bachelor’s, and then I’m hoping to get a job as a journalist.

I’m also the editor-in-chief of the WCCC newspaper, the Campus Racket, which basically entails writing a few articles and editing everything else. If you didn’t get it from my grammar rant, editing is my thing. Right now I’m working as a cashier – formerly a produce associate – at my local Shop Rite, which I actually enjoy quite a bit. You meet some interesting people there.

I have a little brother, David, who’s developing into quite the worthy tactician in Age of Empires and similar. I’ve got some great friends that I’ve known for years – my best bud Michael, who I’ve known since I was seven, and a number of other great people I’ve known almost as long, such as Maxine and Ben, my eternal gaming rival. I’ve been together in a long-term relationship with a great girl, Augusta, for the last several months. Augusta has been a great friend to me since I was about ten, and she is one of the rarest of all creatures on this earth – she plays Halo and Soul Calibur, people! And she’s actually GOOD!

So in summation; I like my job, I’m doing well in school, I have some great, loyal friends, and I’ve got a healthy relationship with an attractive girl who’s not only all-around awesome but who can also tolerate my neuroses. And people wonder how I can be optimistic about life!

Hmm. So there’s something of an introduction. Now if I mention any of this stuff later on, you’ll know what I’m talking about. Hopefully you have a better feeling for who I am. Always better in context, right?

Stop speaking in tongues!

This is Greg J. here. I created this blog as a supplement to my website's news page; this being a place where I can lean a little more on personal rants instead of things actually relevant to said website (http://www.limegreennetwork.com/, if anyone's wondering). I shall begin this process with a rant on one of my greatest pet peeves…

Grammar! Anyone on LGN can tell you, I'm a total grammar nazi. And of course, spelling is also an issue. Now, if you really don't know how to write very well, and you don't understand grammar entirely, that's one thing. I still say it's not too hard to get a clue, but I'll give you a little sympathy there. You know what REALLY gets me, though? The people who do it on purpose - in other words, the abomination that is AOL Shorthand.

Now, I’ve heard all the justifications for AOL Shorthand – “it’s easier,” “I need to be able to send messages quickly,” and of course “everyone else does it now anyway.” Only one of these excuses has any validity, and that one only in certain situations. I concede that sending messages quickly CAN be a priority over appearance in online gaming, where being “typekilled” is a constant danger which increases with the length of your sentence. So it’s semi-acceptable to me to see Shorthand language used in such situations. However, any of the other justifications for its use, in any other situation, will not fly with me. Let’s face it, people: we’ve gotten lazy.

When you’re chatting online, sending a text message, or sending an e-mail – ESPECIALLY that latter – there is NO good excuse for saying “o” instead of “oh,” “u” instead of “you,” “r” instead of “are,” “b” instead of “be,” and “2” instead of “to” or “too.” I mean, wow. At most it saves you a whole TWO keystrokes! Good thing you didn’t have to hit those two keys, or you could lose your fingers! Or just look intelligent. I’M NEVER SURE WHICH.

Seriously, people. To anyone who’s not a brain-dead e-baby, typing like that makes you look like a complete, unrespectable idiot. You could be revealing the meaning of life, but if it starts with “ur about 2 b enlightened, lol” not too many people will listen. It’s just sheer laziness, and it’s laziness that happens to be lowering the collective intelligence quotient of the planet. If it’s not worth taking the extra nanoseconds to type out properly, it’s not worth saying at all.

Oh, and grammar. God, the poor apostrophe… Never has a punctuation mark been so needlessly and cruelly abused. I’ll do everyone reading this a favor and give you a quick lesson on the correct use of the apostrophe:

- If it’s being used to indicate possession, it belongs either before the “s” added to the end of the word (“George’s house”), or, if the word being modified already ends in an “s,” the apostrophe belongs AFTER it (“Chris’ house”).

- If it’s being used in a contraction (“it is” to “it’s,” for instance), you will have to learn where it belongs on a case-by-case basis (“you are” to “you’re,” but not “your!”)

- If it’s being used within a quotation (“so I said, ‘no, you do it,' and then he ran off”), the apostrophe is used in place of a quotation mark around the quoted phrase within the quote.

In NO OTHER SITUATION is the use of an apostrophe acceptable! One of the things that used to drive me nuts (until I finally just ripped it down last week) was a sign on a club bulletin board at my college posted over a list of club members reading “our officer’s.” Unless there was more to that sentence (“our officer’s duck collection”), that apostrophe did not belong, and the correct wording would have simply been “our officers,” sans apostrophe. Unfortunately, mistakes of the exact same nature are made constantly. Another popular victim is “it’s” and “its.” Despite the rule on apostrophes and possession that I previously cited, when you’re saying that something belongs to “it,” the correct spelling is “its.” Although it might not look like it, “it’s” is actually a contraction of “it is,” and should not be used otherwise. A lot of contractions get that, actually – “you’re” (contraction of “you are”) and “your” (“your house”) get confused all the time.

Another grammar mistake seen all too often, which drives me up the bleeding wall, is when People Capitalize The First Letter Of Every Word In A Sentence, or Else use first Letter capitalization seemingly at Random. Sweet Zombie Jesus, people... Here's when you capitalize the first letter of a word: when it's someone or something's name or title (as in "Sweet Zombie Jesus"), and when it's the first word at the start of a sentence. THAT'S IT! NEVER ANY OTHER TIME!

"A lot" is the common victim of Frankensteinification by being combined into a single, unnatural word - "alot." Guess what? "Alot" is not a word. As my first English professor at college, the great B.J. Ward, put it rather brilliantly: "it's rather like going up to your mother and asking if you can please have 'acookie.' Not quite correct." And speaking of things Ward would like you to know, "OK" and "okay" are both acceptable spellings of the word, but uncapitalizing the acronym version ("ok"), actually creates a bastard word that one would pronounce using a hard, German-esque "ach" sound.

And of course, there’s always the simple misspelling of words. Now, to your credit, some of the spelling rules we’re taught when we’re younger are lies. “I before E except after C?” More like “I before E except when it’s not.” Tons of words break the “I before E” rule – “weird,” for instance. However, there are other words people get wrong all the time that I simply can’t understand. Some of them, like “teh,” are just typos; the result of hasty typing. Others come about when people are typing words they’ve only heard but not seen, such as “walla” instead of “voila.” Some misspellings, however… just boggle the mind. Look, people… if you know you’re not good at spelling, just… just use a spell check, okay? Please? It’s not that hard. And it’s good for my brain.

So yeah. I think I’d better wrap this up now before I go on too much longer. I’ll post again with another rant soon enough. Hope you all learned something here today.