The tagboard has just died a merciful death. Getting tired of deleting the multiple irrelevant, automated postings, so I just deleted it. I might bring it back after a while, but for now, I have to slap the spambots in the face. Take that, fools!

Relevant posts soon to come, but I'm working on last-minute school crap all day today. Gonna have to wait.

I was looking at the back of a city bus the other day, and I got to thinking. Would it be possible to run a bus off of human-excreted methane? What I was thinking was, each seat on the bus could have some kind of little recepticle, and every time some old woman farts, the recepticle would collect the wind, and pass it along to a fuel cell.

I dunno. Just something stupid to think about.

This Is My Life, Rated
Life:	6.2
Mind:	7.2
Body:	6.9
Spirit:	5.8
Friends/Family:	3.2
Love:	0.8
Finance:	4.2
Take the Rate My Life Quiz

Long time no update. I apologize for not spending more time whittling away my life on the keyboard, but I'm sure that none of you would enjoy reading about how many Pokémon I've leveled up today.

By the way, see this thing?


It will steal your life. Be warned.

This is the last time that I will apologize for not making an entry. I will make entries when I feel like making them. If I don't, then I won't. Plain and simple.

If anyone would like to know when I update, there is a small subscription forum in the upper-right hand corner of the page where you can submit your e-mail address. It is a script written by the fine members of Bravenet that sends a message to your inbox regarding when the blog has been updated. Stick your addy in there. Or don't. I'm not the boss of you.

COAC 2: Clean out your trunks!

Get your mind out of the gutter. I don't mean your shorts. Unless there's something going on down there that shouldn't be happening...oh gawd, what am I talking about? I need to get my own mind out of the gutter!

Moving on...

Does no one regularly use their car trunk anymore? It seems that whenever I take groceries out to people's cars, they often ask to have them placed, not in the trunk, but in the back seat, where they will inevitably smash into a million pieces on the floor.

Ok ma'am. So, you're telling me that, rather than making use of the
fine storage compartment in the back of your vehicle, you would rather dumpster-dive onto the floor, pick the bag out from under your seat, and brush off the dust & mold from your bruised oranges? M'kay. Whatever. It's your back you're throwing out of alignment, not mine.

Using the trunk must make too much sense...

I'm aware, however, that many times it's because the trunk is simply too full. I can understand if it was an uncommon instance where you legitimately needed the space, like if you went to Home Depot and picked up a big supply of potting soil, or if you shot one of your homies in the face and needed someplace to stash the body. Y'know, something like that. Naturally, the trunk space would probably be unavailable.

That's not what I'm referring to, though. I'm talking about the people who use their trunk like a storage shed and fill it up with crap that was originally purchased in 1979, and hasn't seen the light of day since. The people who carry around a crate full of motor oil or gasoline, just in case. The people who needlessly haul two spare tires. You know what I'm talking about.

If you fall into this category, go outside, pop the trunk, and gut it. Clean out everything that isn't essential and dump it in your garage, or if you don't have one, a landfill. Same difference.  It's amazing who much smoother your daily life will be if you actually have a consistently vacant storage space in your car.

So go do it. You, and the bagboy at your local grocery store, will be glad you did.

More later.

After a month and a half, I believe that I have accumulated enough experience to comment on certain "topics of interest" regarding working at a so-called grocery store. I was going to turn this into a sort of daily mini-series. However, I also was going to start much earlier than this, but the monotony of going to work and coming back home again has really made the summer fly by. So, instead, I'm just going to mine this hole until I hit some granite. Enjoy.

Confessions of a Carryout #1 (COAC 1): Introduction

My chief duty at Leppink's is being a bagboy. What's different about being a bagboy at Leppink's, other than the fact that such persons are known as "carryouts," is being in a tiny hick-town in the middle of nowhere. As such, the store itself isn't much bigger, and it employs no more than twenty to twenty-five people, only about ten of which work at any one time. This means that the intra-store duties are rotated around, depending on who happens to be working at the time. Since I am only employed over the summer, I will never do anything more than bag, and face (starighten and fill shelves), because by the time I actually learn anything about how the store operates, I will have to leave for school. Therefore, there isn't much point in giving me any of the more crucial tasks.

Due to the size of the store and the local area, the carryouts typically do as the name implies: carry out croceries to the customer's cars and load them. Personally, I say that this is only because anyone with this position will typically have nothing better to do other than haul carts and sacks around. Which is fine, I guess. It does keep said persons occupied...

Regardless of how bagboys happened to become carryouts, this is my task. During the course of providing my services to the customers, I have noted many things about what goes through a person's mind, or rather, what doesn't. The first item of interest I will share with you tonight. Other thoughts and ideas will be presented in later entries as I happen to make note of them.

A large portion of our customer base happens to be the elderly. There are a lot of old folks out here who happen to live on their own for whatever reason, and they need groceries on a regular basis like everyone else. I understand and respect this. Whenever an elderly person checks out, I treat them with care, respect, and friendliness, because many of those that come through our doors are also physically disabled. Many of them have bad hips, canes, junky knees, and other stuff related to the natural deterioration of the human body. Some of them aren't capable of carrying out a week's worth of groceries to the car, so this is one of my primary responsibilities when the situation arises. I have no complaints about this whatsoever, and am happy to assist.

What really invokes my ire and confusion, however, is when an elderly/disabled individual is accompanied by a younger, more able-bodied person. In my mind, the presence of the latter should remove the need for the priemier. If "Grandma" has her family around to help her, then there is no reason for her to be bumming around the isles, getting in everyone else's way, and being a general nuisance or potential health risk. She doesn't need to come in and pick out her own fruits and cereal. That's what grocery lists and advertisments are for. The family member should have asked her what she needed before he/she left the house. Also, the excuse of getting her out of the house for some exercise and fresh air is not valid, as there are plenty of other ways this can be accomplished without having to irritate the general public.

It's like those weird people who bring their dogs along, just for the sole purpose of leaving it in the car. The dog serves no practical purpose, and by bringing it along, the poor mutt is faced with the risk of heat exhaustion and/or dehydration, just from needlessly sitting in the hot, steamy, unventilated automobile. The dog, like Grandma, would be much happier and healthier at home.

If I live to be eighty, happen to have family members around, and one of them wants to take me to the store, I will staple a grocery list to their forehead, and whack them with my cane until they leave.

If you wisely took my advice and skipped the last entry, here is a crash summary: In an affort to get some college funding, which could not be found in Port Huron, I have temorarily moved to my father's house in Stanton, Michigan, and have been working at a grocery store he manages for the last month or so. I should be back in town on August 14th, a week before classes start.

---

I was going to begin commenting on my duties at the grocery store tonight, but before I continue any farther, I have to vent some frustration. It's been building for the last twenty-four hours and it's driving me crazy!

My mother gave me a phone call last night. Right from the start, I know this can't be good news, as very few such initiated conversations with my mother are. Sure enough, it's her Windows-related ignorance contacting me, telling me that the computer had blown up in her face for the 3245864320956th time. She tells me that she had run the virus scanner (!) and said that it had found some things.

Immediate mental reaction #1: You wouldn't know how to deal with a virus if the scanner happened to find something, Mom, so why, in the name of all that is sacred, did you run it?!

Judging from the description of what it found, it had probably found some spyware. As such, I figure it's probably better to just leave it where it is, as she could be deleting something that actually isn't a threat, and it may even be a utility file of some kind. So I tell her to just close the virus scanner and leave it be. Oh, but that doesn't seem to be the only problem! (groan...) After this, she tells me that she cannot connect to the Internet anymore! She says that once she clicks the connect button on the dialogue box that it reads "Unable to establish a connection."

Okay, a multitude of different things can be wrong here. After running off a checklist of sorts with her, I obtained the following diagnosis: the modem is making no sound whatsoever* in attempting to connect online; no dial tone, no number crunching, no screeching, nada. After rebooting the machine, a New Hardware icon displayed in the system tray, saying something with the word "modem" in it. It's possible that the thing may have done some update, and in the process, the modem driver was replaced and wasn't installed properly (Mom's ignorance, probably). I don't have any real way of knowing what's going on though, because I'm on the other side of the state and I can't see the screen from here, obviously. I tell ehr this, and hinted that the was pretty much screwed and she should dono more with the thing until I come back home in two weeks. She moaned at me, saying something about being unable to find some EMS stuff that she wanted to look up.

Immediate mental reaction #2: Don't give me that baloney! ** You go for weeks on end without using the stupid thing when I am home, so you can go for seventeen days without the Internet until I come back.

I guess this is somewhat my fault. I allowed my intimidation of her to get in the way of my better judgement when creating her account, but no longer. After this experience, I can now justify revoking the rights of her account on the computer. When I first bought the machine, I was initially hesitant on doing so, because she may have become suspicious of what I was up to. You know, like trying to keep your parents out of your room because you may or may not have a bag of cocaine hidden under your mattress. Well, once I get home, she is so having her rights removed.  I'm sick of the stupid thing thinking that she is a competent user when she clearly isn't, so I'm basically going to put her user name on permanent probation. Hopefully I can prevent the computer from trying to do something stupid while she's logged on, like UPDATING!

Sigh...I feel better. Being able to speak of cocaine in an essay exempt of anything ghetto-related cheered me up a bit. That, and having a reason for taking something away from my mother, for a change. Oh, I'm feeling particularly evil right now!

---

* I don't think I've been given all of the symptoms. I have the feeling that she didn't turn the speakers on when she tried dialing. On this machine, the modem noise is fed into the sound system, so that, when it tries to connect, you can turn the ear-splitting screech off. However, with the sound off, if a problem does happen, its much harder to diagnose. I asked her if she had the speakers on when she tried, and I didn't get a definate answer. Her reply was that the dialogue box "immediately says 'Unable to establish a connection.'" So, without having gotten a response, I don't have any real way of knowing if it's even dialing or not.

** I know the proper spelling of bologna, but it feels better to spell it phonetically.

Before I begin the next thread of entries, I would like to be blunt. I'm not going to try to make this sound particularly interesting. I haven't made a proper entry in months, simply because I can't bring myself to do it. Writing well takes a lot out of me. Also, having a new computer with a bunch of new games is a big distraction. You know the story: you go to sit down and do some real work, but you decide that, before you begin, you'll play a quick game half-hour blast of Doom. Well, minutes turn into hours, hours into days, days into weeks, and so forth. Video games are a freaking drug, man.

Anyhoot, like I was saying, this entry is not going to be up to my usual writing standards. I have too much that I want to start saying, but can't because I have to play catch-up with where my life is right now. So I'm just going to put it down without any frills or anything and be done with it, so I can actually get back to writing about things are are more attention grabbing.

So, unless you are a relative of my family, a close friend, or me twenty years down the road, you will not want to read this entry.

I know I haven't said, but I haven't been in the Port Huron area for the last couple of weeks. I had been trying to find a summer job to get some college funding, but for all the searching I did, I may as well have been trying to find employment inside of a box of Fruit Loops. You know, the free prize?

"Free employment opportunities inside!"

Ok...I know it's a stretch, but I do believe I had a better chance of finding a job laying on top of my breakfast.

Moving on...

During the course of my search, my father happened to drop me an e-mail, asking me for an update on life. We don't talk to each other as much as we should, but to be frank, there isn't much to be said when your daily routine consists of getting up, going to work/school, and coming back home again. It had been a while since we had last talked, so he sends me a note. Perfectly understandable. So I do what any loving nineteen-year-old son would do: I ignore it for a week.

After staring at this eyesore for several days, my conscience finally gets the better of me and I figure I should flag him down on MSN Messenger. I figure this was the easiest way to go, as responding to the e-mail at this point would be terribly awkward, considering how often I check the bloody thing. Besides, I usually find the dynamic flow that our conversations take to be an excellent source for entertainment. No matter what the initial topic is, we always seem to revert to some computer game that we've been playing. It's like Paul Morphy playing chess with a six-year-old. It's a foregone conclusion that Morphy will win, no matter what handicap he is given. But that isn't why anyone watches. The act of seeing it happen is entertainment in and of itself.

Yes, I realize Morphy has been dead for over a century. I just don't feel like typing the name Kasparov more than once. So there.

"Mindless chatter...REBA! Get back to the inquiry!"

I manage to catch Dad online. We go through the usual rotuine of catching up with each other, and pretty much find out that little has changed in the last several months, which is typical and expected. (aside: I see why we usually wind up talking about Madden football so much) While we blabber, he happens to ask me what I was doing for the summer. My reply is simple: Blah blah blah...trying to find a job...blah blah blah...no success...blah blah blah. He does something unexpected here (God, I feel like I'm annotating a chess match). He asks if I would be interested in working at the grocery store he manages in Stanton. Without really taking it into consideration, I half-heartedly, but immediately, agree to the offer, not actually believing that my mother would ever consent to such a thing. She's starting to become rather overprotective of my "autism," so I didn't think there was a chance in hell of her ever allowing such a thing to occur.

Well, guess what? This entry is coming to you live from Stanton, Michigan.

Now that we've come full circle, I can actually begin the fun regarding Montcalm County.

The month of April 2005, will go down in my history books as one of the most stressful months of my life. I'm surprised I didn't get some kind of ulcer, or attempt to drive my Lumina off a bridge somewhere.

I think I've mentioned the living hell that is, or rather was, Business Communications. Well, during the course of this past month, OA 125's level of annoyance moved from eye sporking to, oh, let's say willingly running around campus with a trench coat full of pin-less frag grenades screaming "I are communist!" at random.

As part of the final grade, the class was given a set of topics, one of which a professional-like business report was to be done on. This was nothing unfamiliar; we had been told at the start of the semester that we would have to complete one. However, knowing that my topic involved something that I am very knowledgeable about, I didn't concern myself with it.

Who gives a rat's ass what network operating system would be best for a company? I said to myself. Seeing how much that group knows about computing, I could say that Novell NetWare is the most popular OS on the market, and no one will know any different. Why should I invest any time into this when there's fun to be had over the skies of Flanders? So I put it out of my mind. I whittled the days away in the era of Richthofen, winning countless, hollow battles against even more hollow aircraft. There was much fun to be had in the cockpit of my speedy Spad XIII. It was so speedy, in fact, that it had shot me into the future, and left me with only one week in which I was supposed to research and present a professional business report, something can easily take months to complete in the business world.

Crap.

It was safe to say that, by this point, I was so far underwater that I could no longer see which way was up. However, I realized that, as part of a project for Networking, I had to choose a NOS for a fictitious company. Seeing as how I had to do this anyway, I decided to adhere my report to the situation at RobCo, the false company. I pulled out my Net + book and frantically began plagarizing from it to write my report. What happened after that is a mystery to me. I'm guessing my brain had to use some equivalent of virtual memory in order to process that thing, and in the process, blanked out a piece of my memory. I remember snippets of the "creative process," but I don't remember anything else about that week.

Regardless, I somehow got the thing done, handed it in, and as part of the report, presented my findings to the class. And with that, the only thing left of the nightmare is the exam, which is going to be a Scantron (multiple choice) test. Sweet...finally time to relax...

...I realized that, as part of a project for Networking...

Double crap.

Well, actually more like crap & a half. In this project, I am assuming the role of a network designer, and my goal is to install a new network for a company that has a scanty collection of "computers." I'm being graded on the portfolio that I present to my teacher, Rob: the "owner of RobCo." It will essentially consist of some price estimates, along with a listing of what products I'm going to buy with the company's money. In essence, there is no real work involved: just go out online and print out pictures of cable, connectors, and other stuff, and throw a price under it. The only problem with this project is that I have yet to actually do the portfolio, hence this entry's change of tense.

Somewhere in this whole mess of a month was my 19th birthday, and as a treat, I took the $30 Grandma Morgan gave me and bought a copy of Call of Duty. For the last two weeks, the only constructive thing I've done is act as the Royal Air Corps' team representative for Red Baron World League VI. I've been so engrossed with this game that, after only two days, I beat the Single Player mode. All gamers know, however, that the real fun is in online arenas.  So, over the last few days, I've been battling Nazis and my iffy 230-ish ping time in CoD multiplayer. I've worked my way up from total novice to having a 1:1 kill/death ratio. With a dial-up connection, I think that's purdy dern good.

So that's April 2005, in a nutshell. I've got my exams next week, and in mid-May, a "vacation" in Tennessee that Grandma Redford concocted. I'm not terribly enthusiastic about it, seeing as how I'm going to be deprived of a computer for a week.

By the way, a big thank you to everyone who wished my a happy birthday in my tag board over the 15th! Your wishes meant a lot to me.

Ok, I've had enough of looking at this Notepad window.

Only a true Beatles freak could ever get away with this...

Describe yourself using one band and song titles from that band
Created by naw5689 and taken 21801 times on bzoink!
Choose a band/artist and answer only in song TITLES by that band:	The Beatles
Are you male or female:	Bad Boy
Describe yourself:	Little Child
How do some people feel about you:	Young Blood
How do you feel about yourself:	Nowhere Man
Describe your ex girlfriend/boyfriend:	Lonesome Tears In My Eyes
Describe your current girlfriend/boyfriend:	Can't Buy Me Love
Describe where you want to be:	Back In The USSR
Describe what you want to be:	Something
Describe how you live:	Don't Bother Me
Describe how you love:	It Won't Be Long
Share a few words of wisdom	Everybody's Got Something To Hide Except For Me And My Monkey
Create a Survey Search Surveys Go to bzoink!

Pre Script: I know I haven't updated in a while, but I'm the kind of guy that doesn't like to put up a lot of filler. I don't like posting unless I have something to post, so I apologize for having taken so long. I've got some new stuff to put up, but I want everyone to realize I'm still here before I go on a posting binge.

---

I checked the date.

March 11.

Good. For a minute, I thought it was Groundhog's Day.

The entire week felt like it was the same day repeating itself in an infinite loop. The only variances in the days consisted of which aircraft I shot down over the skies of 1918 Flanders or what team I happened to demolish in the 1991 NFL season. Little from that week stood out in my mind. It was all nothing but one big haze of flashing swords, burning pieces of plywood, and mechanical objects traveling at various barrier shattering speeds.

That was supposed to have been my killer spring break.

Where were the hot women? Where were the sandy beaches? Where were the half-naked teenagers lustfully clinging to each other in some vain attempt to reenact a soft-core porn scene?

Oh wait, I had forgotten. It's Michigan, in the middle of March. The fantasy of a 1970's beach party cannot be found here, as most sane teens are either out of the area, or, like me, have locked themselves indoors.

Staring into my life support monitor computer screen, I flipped through blog entries, hoping to find that someone I knew was having a better spring break than I was.

Well, ok, I didn't actually care that much. I was just bored and wanted something to read while I ate my sundae.

Despite my greatest efforts, this was the best thing I could find. Not that there's anything wrong with Mountain Dew and RPG's, but come on! That sounds like something I, Admiral Antisocialism, would have come up with. Surely someone could have come up with something better than that!

Oh wait, I had forgotten. It's Michigan, in the middle of March. The utopia of a close-knit family enjoying warm, fuzzy moments cannot be found here, as most people still have jobs to go to. Oh, and most teens are also nowhere to be found in public.

Finding no love on the Internet, I slid over to the window behind be to assess the weather. Perhaps I could go jogging?

Oh wait, I had forgotten. It's Michigan, in the middle of March. The dream of me enjoying the peaceful weather that is associated with spring break was shattered by the thermometer reading a temperature below freezing.

Whoever forced us to have our break at this time of year should be drug out into the street, placed beside what's left of President Bush's rotting carcass, and have his head blown off in a similar fashion.*

I guess what I'm trying to say is this: why did spring break have to be so crappy this year?

* = Inside joke for anyone who was in my POD class in high school.