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A round of three shakes from an ice cream place is like $15. A few Blizzards from Dairy Queen is roughly the same. But a pie from Baker's Square costs $12 and gives at least a minimum of six pieces, which for us is two days worth of dessert. I never really thought I'd see Baker's Square as providing economical food, but that's the truth of the matter. And honestly, what seems more special - a shake or a nice piece of French Silk? Today I grilled steak and used up half of a bottle of offensively ...

A restful day so far. My pace over the weekend left me little time to sleep, so my body took the chance to catch up on it today. At least I did do something of import by taking the time to pull out all of the new growth which was sprouting by the perimeter of the house, which threatened to dig its roots into the foundation. In the front of the house there was one stump in particular which had a few feet of length on it and took considerable effort to remove, even after digging around and chopping ...

Games. My copy of Akai Katana has come in, and I've clocked some sixteen hours into Diablo 3 since last Wednesday, which is abnormal for what I usually have done for the last year or two. It's definitely an unsustainable lifestyle for me at this point. Often times I find myself believing that I was born exactly at the right moment in the grand arc of American history, or global history, as I overall am young enough to not be intimidated by technology but old enough to recall how life was without ...

Everyone on schedule arrived to the retail job today, which I wouldn't have wagered on. Between that and other volunteers coming to help the day wasn't too terrible, despite the weather. Earlier in the day there was a carryout which I had to assist with, which entailed taking a five piece unassembled table set out of its package and putting the parts individually into a small Hyundai hatchback of some kind. If that option didn't work, the customer would have been screwed and had to have arranged ...

Another Saturday and another new helper sent out into the wilderness that is our store's parking lot. So here's what I don't get. The woman they send out to help is a thirtyish year old mother who is dressed for her normal workday, meaning no gloves and flat fashionable shoes. In this case, I always do the task of leading the line of carts and have the helper just use the machine; this makes me be the guy to dance around everything and guide it all around, while the helper just has to keep the machine ...

I need to remember primarily that the weather is anticipated to be rather hot tomorrow and I need to procure a cooler for store use so that I can have some bottled water on hand throughout the course of the day. Staffing is at an anemic three persons tomorrow, myself and another person having the exact same time scheduled, which will lead to break conflicts. Though I can amply juggle some booze, AM radio, and playing early Diablo 3 all at the same time, perhaps I shouldn't combine doing all three ...

At least in the very early stages at the default difficulty, Diablo 3 is rather docile and easy to play with a single hand while taking shots of whisky through the night. What I didn't expect was how terrible the script and voice acting would be in the game. I'm curious if any reviews will pick up on that. Speaking of reviews, the reviews of Akai Katana have been rolling in and while there have been a few people who actually did rate the game well, there's still just as many reviews which have the ...

Rather uneventful day so far. Just working on Form 8825 for tax form development, which is more tedious than anything else because it is eight repeated columns of common data, which means that after I have all the names in place and the scripting as I want, I now have to go into the source code and set the bindings as I need them - doing it this way drastically reduces the time required but also potentially wrecks the document, because LiveCycle is finicky enough as it is and doesn't like when the ...

Our house is situated near a maple tree which releases those whirlygig seedlings that get caught in the gutters. I have to go up and clean it out every so often, particularly this time since some of the seeds seemed to have taken to sprout and stalks of green were visible from the edge of the roof. I take the ladder to go up there today, and I notice that there's a shingle missing from the edge of the roof, as if something took a bite out of the surface. I noticed that some wasps were flying around ...

It is now established that I will be playing as a monk in Diablo 3 for purposes of playing the game with some of my coworkers. I do have to wonder how much time we will consistently play together until life circumstances arise that nobody can meet up and the group effectively disbands. All I'm hoping for is that I don't have to undertake a majority of the coordination or leadership, in that this isn't something that I was primarily looking forward to doing in the first place. If my wife hasn't purchased ...

My society-imposed duty of paying homage to my mother today is not being enforced, as she is currently out of the country with my sister on another trip. Good for her, and good for me, as I can do without buying into Hallmark bullshit. Judging by the lack of traffic at the retail store today, it would appear that many people are loyal to the concept and holiday. If I recall correctly, I worked there the last Mother's Day as well, and that it was similarly light in volume. I managed to finish up ...

Today we decided to buy some take-out food (burritos) to observe Mother's Day, as none of us have a particularly strong desire to dine out. I also decided to go to Baker's Square to get a pie for today's dessert. On the way out, I drove past a main local intersection where there was a car stalled in the turn lane going the opposite direction of how I was heading out to get the food. The resultant line from the traffic jam stretched for at least half of a mile from the point. To accomodate, I managed ...

Moving on to development of the Form 1120 S series now, as I'm finally out of the woods for the first three scenario main forms. I still have to do the freeform attachments in the test cases but those are very simple. Having done the proper 1120 previously has also helped me set up some things for the 1120S which would have taken extra time and aggravation to plot out again. The college student is set to return to retail work this coming Monday. His eagerness in talking about games is going to test ...

My wife has a Cintiq 21UX which has served her very well for some time now, and has had one major repair on it done for free where some ghosting started to come around. One thing which Wacom will not replace for free, however, is scratching that comes about on the plastic protective surface which starts and spreads due to the plastic nub of the pen wearing down to a fine point which progressively digs into the skin. Sending the screen in to Wacom for resurfacing costs $200. I tried using some car ...

And now here's today's dose of one of the worst parts of TNL! Glad to be of service!

With the remainder of bills paid off for the month I need to see about preordering Akai Katana. There was a small leak which did develop in the plumbing work that I did yesterday, but in a different spot, so at least the issue which I needed to repair was still fixed. Luckily, the silicone sealant is easy to strip off and a new application of it seems to show better promise in maintaining a seal. ...