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I'm not quite sure if the deterioration was consistent over time, but it came to the point today where I had to throw out the mouse I was using on this machine and go back to the MS optical mouse I used earlier. I switched it with a Logitech X3 whatever-the-hell so that I could use the MS one on another machine, and never switched back because the pointer moved faster with it. Over time, the right button simply wouldn't respond without being clicked ten or twenty times. Adobe Reader decided it wanted ...

Woops! Looks like I forgot to put this in before going about the rest of my night.

Today's Day Off Errand consisted of getting new vehicle stickers, which I came to find out required me passing a new emissions test. It did print that requirement on the sticker renewal paper, but I hoped it wasn't a specific message and referred to just having a recent passed test in order to be allowed to renew. No such luck on that, and I had to go a few miles over to another city to do the test ...

I thought that the Monday of a holiday weekend was hangover day, right? Didn't seem so at the store today. I dare say it was busier today than it was yesterday - and that's just how it felt outside; apparently things were worse inside because there wasn't as many people scheduled or in proper attendance than compared to yesterday as well (which would make sense for any other Monday). My uncle called me today to ask about W4 withholding, which is odd because he's smart enough to know that his suspicions ...

In respect of the retail job, today's theme has been Unrealized Hype. Yesterday was more humid than today, so despite the thermometers indicating otherwise, I didn't feel like it was significantly warmer outside. Also, the Sunday crowd had a definite regression towards the late afternoon to the point where the parking lot shown the crowd to be distinctly light, at least for a Sunday. Once I returned from lunch and made a run of the lot, there were no further issues in keeping cart stock. Yay. One ...

Typical retail Saturday combined with holiday weekend and decent outdoor heat all adds up to another exhausting day. Nothing new to report from that. However, this is the weekend that my sister decided that she wanted to have a line of small evergreen plants at the rear of her property. This required a rectangular strip of eight by twenty feet to be dug up so that there would be no grass in the area which would inhibit the growth of the new trees. She called while I was at work, so I wasn't able ...

One of the two-way radios which I purchased for work use decided to pick up static for the last hour of my work shift today, and I'm not sure how to make it refrain from doing so. I don't think this is a mere ambient interference issue, because changing the security channel on it to something non-standard still causes a bit of the empty air to be received, though at least not for the entire time as compared to the standard station. Regardless, it's enough of an issue to make me concerned for the ...

Finally gave myself some time to get back into tax form development, and it felt good to do it. Completed 1120S Schedule D without a hitch. My wife has started a hardcore character in Diablo 3, basically just to try it out and see about getting some cheevos, but I find the concept as implemented by the game flawed. For being in that mode, particularly since elements aren't shared among your characters as they are in the normal game (shared stash, shared gold, &c.), there should be better and ...

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 ...