dog$

Today in retail news. Four cart men scheduled today. Me first at 7AM, next at 8AM. Third is scheduled in at 1230PM, and as he forewarned when I worked with him yesterday, he did in fact call off. He made mention of a pressing school project which is due at Midnight tonight and that he hasn't started yet. I didn't ask for details. The fourth was scheduled at 4PM, which is my scheduled end time. As fate would have it, however, he managed to get himself fired last night - the way he explained it to ...

Enjoy the hour.

I don't understand why it's so difficult for people to listen to the entirety of the answer which I want to give them when they ask me a question. I make a point to not ramble on, I choose my words carefully and form statements with a basis and direction in mind. One of the overnight workers asks me if I knew where a cart machine remote was, because he thought it was lost. I explain that I had it held in a drawer at the main register, and why (because it only periodically ...

Form 1120 Schedule UTP allows you to report Uncertain Tax Positions. Essentially, it's a way to CYA on reporting something for which there's no clear cut rules in the code or Regulations which dictate how you should enter something on a form, and you give yourself a space to explain the basis in your chosen action. One thing which I'll need to revise is the second part of the form where you manually write the explanation out - I think there's a character limit per line that I forgot to remove, and ...

Huh, I guess I thought I pasted this in but never did? Weird. Oh well.

Not as good of a run with songs today as yesterday. Can't all be winners. I guess I was pretty lazy with the grace note chords in Lights, considering how bad the score was from the lack of Greats. Beyond that and the bad opening, it wasn't too awful, just didn't have as good success in increases as yesterday. Much better run with fffff this time than the last time that I recall playing it.

Extra ...

Tradition upheld. Temperature outside was nice enough today that sitting outside for beggar's duty wasn't so bad, as long as I had a fair amount of layers on as well as some gloves. Despite that, my fingers did get pretty chilled towards the end of daylight and was more than happy to come inside once the curfew hit and the night had fallen.

I did manage to correctly anticipate the volume this year and had enough candy on hand to meet demand, with only a few pieces left to spare before ...

There's a segment of external house siding which has always been weaker in staying in place against the wall of the house and has taken off with the wind on a few extraordinary occasions. I wake up this morning and find the piece on the basement floor. There's already a hole in it which I patched with duct tape on both sides, and today I put more of that adhesive to use. I replaced the piece and lined the top of it with the tape to hold it against the top of the wall segment. Just tugging at the ...

Today, my wife and I undertook a Halloween tradition in preparation for the holiday. She orders some Moo cards (basically half-width business cards) that have a set of ten preview shots from various art works that she's completed. We take the Moo cards and tape them to the candy which we will hand out on the day. I stole the idea after the wonderful Achewood comic about a realtor doing the same for business purposes. While our doing this hasn't directly translated to her ever getting recognition ...

One thing I'll need to remember to do tomorrow morning is find the Assistant Manager.

For whatever reason, there were some employees and CSMs (my immediate bosses, so to speak) parroting this line today about how he said that "the remote for the cart machine was fixed". This statement is coming around today, a Sunday, and I never saw any service person at the store on Friday, and I doubt that they make weekend calls. I also doubt that they make night time calls, and any ...

Saturday before Halloween means that there's a lot of people doing shopping to stock up today.

As predicted, the lack of a corral in the lot has resulted in more strays accumulating in its wake through the course of the day. In writing so now, I recall that when I first started the job, I initially moved the corrals to places where I noticed accumulations such as that frequently occur. Not much of a logical stretch. This time, though, I wonder if some customers felt familiar with ...

I look forward to work tomorrow in light of a change today.

One of the corrals which we had in the lot was severely worn to the point where the decorative top was removed and the remaining base of it was bent to the point where it nearly became useless. Running the machine through that corral became infeasible. It has been like that for months, but having it there is better than having nothing at all. For whatever reason, they have decided to take that corral down today. It's gone. ...

Rain sounds so much sweeter now that the new gutters are in place. I dare say the entire system of drainage we have is improved by it, to the point that the sump pump didn't activate as frequently. I am slightly confused by this, because if anything I would have expected more water to flow into the hole in light of more water being fed in from the gutters now that they are not junk. Ah, there it goes right now. Still, it's very exciting to not have a waterfall spill over from the roof of the house ...

Today is her birthday and our fourth anniversary.

To make a day of it and since we haven't done so in a while, we decided to go to Fry's to pick something out for her gift. I made sure to present this as a choice at first so that I could be spared the necessity of finding something to surprise her with beforehand. I think it's safe to say at this point that neither of us are particularly interested in getting cheap gifts of food or candy or movies or a game or anything particularly ...

My parents' wedding anniversary is in late October, and they are going to take a vacation this year as they have done many years before. Two years ago, they decided to take on a cruise journey through China and Tibet, which shocked me just for how much my Dad loves Bill O'Reilly and Fox News, so I figured that he never would have wanted anything to do with those commies. This year they are taking a cruise up the Rhine river and spending time in some countries there. They have an itinerary printed ...

The current 1120 Test Scenario data which I'm entering now uses a fake corporate name of "WorkNAllDay". I might be able to relate, at least to parts like doing this here and retail bullshit earlier. Four scheduled, one no-call no-show, rain, and managers who do nothing but wring their hands when they allow a two-hour stretch during the noon portion of the day to be handled by a lone cartman.

Songs went pretty badly today. I can't say that I had any of the usual excuses creep ...

For the second time in as many years, my parents are electing to completely uproot the stone ground which lines the edge of their pool and have it redone with a different material. When they first moved to the house, the material was simple gray concrete, like a driveway. It was replaced with a red concrete of a different kind of texture this time, and they have decided that the pool water on the surface makes it too slippery (which it honestly was), so there will be a new material put in now. They ...