I've decided that D20 Modern's expansion: Urban Arcana, is too close to the Matrix in some ways. Hell, there's an EMP pulse spell, another which flat out kills machines, and then one that lets you teleport through phone lines or via email (also rules for casting spells through Email, but that's a different story).

I think Stepmania is a corrupting influence. Asgard's Winamp 3 playlist is currently populated only by songs gained through it. It goes something like this:
1) Heaven (DJ Sammy and Yanou)
2) Sweet Dreams (You'd better know the artist)
3) Butterfly: Upswing Mix
4) Candy: Heart
5) Volume 4: Raver's Mix
6) Dam Dariram
7) Beethoven Virus (Pump it Up)
8) Candy: Star
9) Wonderland: UKS Mix
10) Csikos Post (Pump it Up)
11) Dr. Mario's Theme (Smash Brothers Melee)
12) Going to Suzuka: Shoemaker Mix (S&K)
13) Heaven is Place on Earth: Speedo Mix (Wildside)
14) Ika Uka: E=MC2 Mix (Jenny Rom)
15) Bitches (Mindless Self Indulgence) <---hard as hell, Heavy only and if you've never heard the song the nearly random pauses will kill you.
16) 2002 (Tiger Yamato)
17) History of DDR (DJ Slash & the DDR All Stars)
18) Megaman X Theme (Ummm...duh?)

Manual Labor day is fast approaching (or, if you're trust the clock and in any time zone East of Pacific) it already is here, technically. So, what that means is this: My neighborhood is building homes, which means free top soil, and no one in my family is working tomorrow, so it's manual labor time. Warning to all, getting near my house can easily result in conscription, however, conscription does equal soda and likely pizza at the completion of the dirt moving, so approach my house at your own risk. Anyone who can arrange for themselves to have a "medical emergency" I'm long past moral qualms about that kind of lie. Now I just need to contemplate posting that pic of Heaven from Stepmania to scare people.

And onward to other stuff. Firstly, let's take some comments from Katie's side of the field. So, you're Helen eh? And "She's got to be 40, what is this mothers gone wild?" is the statement you're mostly likely to say? Interesting. As for posting my AP scores, I said I'd post them unless I did really well, which near straight 4's isn't. I wanted straight 5's, studied not at all and ought to be satisfied with 4's and a 3, but I know that something seems wrong about that, oh well.

Well, Pirates will have to wait for a later time, I think I'll play Stepmania until Asgard pulls another fatal exception and freezes/locks up and then I'll go to bed.

New from the front (second attempt)

Yeah, Second attempt, I hit the back button on the new mouse and even though I told Blogger to save what I had, it of course didn't.

Anyways, back to the topic at hand. Asgard now exists, though very little else. To exacerbate the issues I have with Comcast's cable service to my modem randomly not functioning Asgard has his own slew of issues. Yeah, Asgard's a he and not an it, it's easier that way. Anyways, Asgard is because He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named (perhaps it is Should) was too many characters long, which is a grand pity. So, besides all Blizzard made games crashing randomly and Asgard randomly restarting, he's doing fine, except I need to get his memory sent back, but I'm in no mood to reorder the stuff and resend it back. Too much effort involved in doing that at this time of day (which was 3 hours ago on the first attempt). I'll discuss more on Asgard as things develop.

Went and saw Pirates of the Caribbean today, definately gets a reccomendation. There'll be a deeper post later, but 1:00 AM and being on a cpu for the vast part of the day isn't conductive to posting.

The promised Random Crap

It's really sad when I have customers hurling packages at me too, but I did anyways. Okay, so I was asking for it. The place was crowded and he had a tiny drop-off package, so I just motioned for him to toss it to me, and he did. I didn't expect him to use such a high arc, but whatever, like I say, our customers are mostly cheapskates and morons.

David's back, I don't know what brought me to say that, cause if you've been paying attention to Life you'd already be aware of that fact, but I think it bears saying as well. Course, now that he's back I seem to have lost my powers of rain.

And AP scores still haven't come it. I'd say the suspense was killing me, but I'd be lying. Sure, they matter, but not enough for me to care. Now, if I didn't get straight fives my mother will have my head on a pike, but that's a worry for a later day.

Yay! We've at last stopped watching Shrek at work. Yes, I love Shrek. But nothing but Shrek for four days straight is simply a bit much. I mean, Val and I could've done all the lines from the start, by the end even Bill could, and that's kinda sad. We moved from Shrek to Bug's Life, which I feel is not nearly as good as Antz, but that's because I like Woody Allen. So, the end conclusion is that Nick should work more often, cause he brought LotR:Fellowship on Saturday. Now, sadly, I spent most of Saturday at Kyle's store instead, but that's how the cookie crumbles sometimes.

The gentleman took back his Magnetic Insoles today. Neither Bill nor I really felt the supposed "energy" or "balance" that they were supposed to bring on, but perhaps we are skeptics. I'd had them for a good 2-3 weeks, but getting odd stuff from customers doesn't happen often enough. I mean, free stuff is always cool, and it doesn't happen often enough.

For those who haven't heard the story, which really ought to be mostly everyone, back about a week or two my mother found a raccoon in our basement. So, she and my father shooed the thing out into the garage with brooms and left the garage open slightly to let it escape. Instead it lay down between the two cars and died. This of course, was a great tragedy, especially because my mother vetoed my father and my idea of giving him a Viking Funeral (putting him in a boat with the weapons of his enemies), but sadly the creek by our house leads to the Chattahooche and knowing our luck the dead guy would've made it out to the river unhindered and caused a real stir. So, instead my mother had to dig a huge hole cause the raccoon decided to spread out before rigor mortis settled in.

So, I've been playing State of Emergency because Ian's little friend left it over here. Let me repeat, my 10 year old brother's 10 year old friend rented a Mature rated game and left it at my house. The basic storyline goes as follows: You're a member of a Revolution against the Corporation. Those could be in quotes, but I'm lazy. There are 3 stages: a mall, China Town, and Eastside. So, basically you can either do "Revolution" which is mission based, or "Khaos" which is more or less one big objective with a point score to beat. David's been playing "Revolution" mode, which I find rather stupid, so instead I messed around with "Khaos" and found what I think is perhaps the sickest of all modes: Last Clone Standing. To get into this, you need to know the weapons:
Pistol, Uzi, Handaxe, Nightstick, Sword, Minigun, Shotgun, Grenade Launcher, Rocket Launcher, Flame Thrower, AK-47, M-16, Grenade, Motlov, Pepper Spray (non-fatal), and Tazer (quite fatal, though very short ranged). So, the way last clone standing works, is that you're in the stage, with fast respawning weapons (4x normal ammo of all but the 1 use weapons) and you're up against 200 enemies who all do nothing but run around...and die. So, it's sickening how my thought I could put into planning what to do (get the Rocket Launcher first? Or go for the minigun?). But yeah, it's fun with sickening slaughter (too bad the little ones turned off gore, cause it would have been amusing).

Apparently Pink jello/pudding and cats don't mix. I have pink cat vomit on the kitchen floor right now. Festive, but disgusting nonetheless.

Karmatic Blogging

Hey, Nice new Title Field options. That said, time to make up for my 4-5 day absence (depending on how you want to count it) from blogging. So, on to the Karma:

Out with the Bad

We'll start off the Bad with last Thursday cause it's as good a place as any to start. Last Thursday I was up at 8:00 because I was told I had a 9:00 hair appointment and then Joe wanted me at work by 10:00 so I could go with him to retrieve a hand-built table from someone's house for the store to ship out. Well, I arrive at the hair salon at, viola, 9:00, and there's no Marlene (she's the lady who I had the appointment with). So, I hang around for 50 minutes, read through 3 magazines, and decide that I really need to be leaving since I know I'm going to be late to work as is. So, I start going and my wonderful window (which I've now gotten fixed) decides to slide down a good 4 inches from the top, which wouldn't be a horrible thing by itself, but then, as ya'll may recall, the sky decided to open up and rain poured down. So, I drove to work, getting soaked, 1 hand holding the window about 2 inches from the top (which was the best I could do since you cannot lift a window without a force on both sides, it just doesn't work, the window will push against a side otherwise and stop moving upwards) and sitting as far to the right on the seat (or off it for a good part of my body) so as to avoid the water streaming in. At least Thursday didn't stay crappy, but it sure started that way.

Number 2, It really irks me to see idiots win. The proverb, the squeaky wheel gets the grease was proved to me this week and last, and it's bad that I let something like this bother me so much, but it does. So, here's how the story goes. Bill goes out of town on a business trip, so it's Cathy, Val, and me in the store and this lady walks in complaining about how her 2 day air didn't get to her friend until 3 days. Cathy asks her if she tracked it and she says yes, so we tell her we'll have our manager give her a call when he gets in town on Monday. That's too slow for her, so we tell her we'll talk to the owner and have him give her a call, she seems satisfied and leaves. Val hops on the computer and inputs the tracking number, and lo-and-behold, the package went out of a Friday and got there on a Tuesday (wow, 2 business days on a 2 day air, who would've thought). So, we speculate that since it was going to a business it must've arrived in 2 days and then internal delivery within the company, something UPS has no part/control of, took the extra day, so Val calls Joe, tells him all this and we leave it in his hands. Friday comes around (yeah, this happened a week before the Thursday above) and I ask Joe how it went. Apparently when he called this lady to explain she interrupted him to state, quite loudly I'm told, that UPS had already approved her claim and that Joe needed to just work on getting her money. Joe tried again to explain why he was calling, she again cut him off and then hung up, so Joe's instructions were that we were not to call her when the refund came in, if she wanted it, she'd have to come ask for it herself, unfortunately, she did. Now, the way we, as a small business, handle refunds on UPS claims is the only way we can in terms of finance. If a customer is getting a refund, they don't get a penny until UPS refunds our account, we not going in the red just so some customer can be repaid for UPS f*cking up. So, this lady comes in on Monday (Bill got back late due to storms and had only been in a few hours) at about 2 and demanded her refund. Bill explained our refund policy (IE, sorry Ma'am, but I can't give you your money back yet) and she went ballistic and bitchy, loudly proclaiming that she didn't care if we didn't have our refund back, she couldn't understand why we couldn't give her her money (yes, a whopping $11.88 I believe it was). So Bill does exactly as I would and say, the Owner is across the street, this is his policy, go speak to him. So she heads off and Bill dashes into the back and calls Joe to give him the warning that she's on her way. She comes back in 5 minutes and says that Joe okayed giving her the money, so we do and she leaves. I hope she never comes back, but that's just me.

Number 3. My computer. I've got most of it right now, the key part is that I have most of it. I don't have the Harddrive, the CD-Drive, the Mouse, and the Keyboard (Which are all on a ground shipment from California, due in on the 15th) or my Memory which is due to, as of yesterday, ship in 2-3 days and is going ground, but they say allow 2-3 weeks for delivery. So, essentially, I'll have all of my computer by Tuesday except my memory, so I say damn, and Kyle says "f-ing assholes". I mean, if they'd asked me I'd have said test or don't, whichever's faster and send it to me by FedEx Ground if you're east of the Rockies or a FedEx Express Saver (Cause 3 day FedEx's go really fast, I only got one sent to me, but it got here in 2 days from way out in CA, gotta love FedEx, at least I do).

This isn't really a Bad persay, but it's not something I like to associate with. Lauren Mikan was in the store on Thursday (I think), she was with her boyfriend (couldn't tell you what #, but I'm fairly certain it was only middle double digits), who was spending his food money for the week sending out something UPS overnight
And, thankfully, I guess that's just about all the major evils this week, though I have an edit button should I have forgotten something.

In with the Good

So, I'm sitting there, looking up a few paragraphs, and then down at the memory chips in my hand, and I figure that's a pretty good place to start with the Good.

Hell, I think about it, and the Good really boils down to the Bad not lasting very long.

Lulu came by the store, and that was good, cause friendly faces among the standard riff-raff are nice, and D'Oraz swings by every now and then to spend lunch break or off work time.

Sorry the Good was so short, but lack of sleep is on my mind right now, and that brings us to:
Random Crap.

Stuff happens, life goes on, and I'll get around to it later.

Wow. I'm again opening the store, since apparently Bill got stuck in Kansas. I don't think I'll ever have a definate schedule, but that's a good thing, cause it's always me getting asked in early, so more hours, equals more cash.

Lunch/Brunch, whatever we've taken to calling a meal at 1:20-ish, was very good. A traditional club on toasted rye followed up by Chocolate Mousse. Excellent.

So now Jiaz and Cal have experienced the umm, experience, that is my driving. If I'd had a better of where I was going I think it would not have been quite so , exciting, and yeah, only one or two slightly overdone turns and one near collision (damn blind spot and the other car moving too fast (cause I know he wasn't there earlier, cause I did look).

Since I don't have anything better to do. I'll post some of the better Life of Riley comics, cause it's a long read, it has a few snags along the way, but that being said, it'll be a good burn of a bit of time.

Math Fun

Death Death Revolution Guidelines

Great Narration Style

I brought my lunch box to work today. That caused a bit of a stir. I'm not certain what I'm going to do at college without it.

That being said, my Daewoo TV is very nice...albiet large and cumbersome.

I visited the allergist this morning. Basically wasted an hour and a half and $15 to schedule a 2 hour appointment. It was pretty dysfunctional.

Yay. I have Bridge Mix again!

I want burning salts. I don't know if there are such a thing, but I want something, chemical sand perhaps, that, when tossed into a normal fire, makes it burn a different color. Wouldn't glowing purple flames be so cool?

I was kinda hoping to leave chemicals out of this. I mean, I realize that the product would have chemicals in it, but that being said. I was more looking for a product than the chemicals I should be stealing (cause I happen to have tons of Borax just lying around, right?)

Okay. I think I might actually have the time and the presence of mind to do another one of these, so here goes my attempt.

Thanks Katie, first and foremost, for coming back. You were here, among us, for such a short time and I'm glad that you're back. I'm saddened that I never made All-State or ASYO (or anything else for that matter) to join you and everyone else for all the fun. Secondly, I say thank you for coming to what concerts you could, it's always nice to have a smiling face out there in the audience (besides my parents), even if the deranged lighting crew makes it impossible to see anything five inches in front of your face. Here's a toast to everything we've every shared: every chance meeting for the oddest of reasons (academic bowl, orchestra, etc.), a dozen conversations without having anything to talk about, and a promise of a rainy day chat. It's been awhile, things have changed, so I obviously cannot say that I know what properly to bequeath you for the start of college, so in lieu of knowledge, you get two. First and foremost, that rainy day chat will be fulfilled, perhaps not on a day with a cloud in the sky, but I'm not one to let my curiosity sit forever. Second, the prodigious duty of keeping track of how many coffees a day needed, because I'm betting that college is going to be that way. I can imagine it now, Colin: *Large Sigh* Today has most definately been a three-mocha day. Jiaz(Having taken a wise course load and having not procrastenated, unlike Colin): Really? Today was most certainly a decaf, extra cream. Okay, maybe not. Yeah, definately not, but I'm guessing that I've lost the presence of mind thing I thought I had. Oh well, such a pity. Well, should I think of something else, it'll get added, cause addendums are something I do often enough anyways. As for who is next? I dunno, but I think Ting would be fun, no?

Current Music: Liquid Tension Experiment: Acid Rain. Just proving that instumental songs are still good.

I watched "Lilo and Stitch" today and I'm going to have to concede that I didn't go into the movie expecting much. It was indeed colorful, if a bit cliche. Too many of the voices I knew, but couldn't put my finger on (I had the same issue with Princess Mononoke). Honestly, this seems to me like another of those Disney needs money movies. Well, that and perhaps the fact that someone on the animation staff was dying to draw a female with a forever bare midriff, but those are just my feelings on the matter. Anyways, the music gets an okay. Nothing fantastic, but after seeing the "Little Mermaid" and playing songs from it, I'm of the belief that if there's a beach there damn well ought to be some calypso music.

I finished reading Avalon, which would have been a miracle for a daily comic starting in 1999, but the author apparently took several multi-month breaks starting at about September 2002, so it wasn't nearly as long as it could/should have been.

Current Song: Moby- That's When I Reach for My Revolver. One of the best things to come out of Life of Riley.

Well, here's today's math lesson. If I have a shipment costing $20.73 and I've already charged $15.73 of it, how much of a discount do I need to apply to the $20.73 to get it to equal the difference. The answer, according to the POS POS (No, that's not a typo, the acronym changes) system that we have over here at the former corperate store, the answer is that it's impossible. If I apply a 100% discount to the $20.73, the charge ends at $5.23. The reason for that is that apparently the $5.00 of insurance and the $.23 fuel surcharge cannot be discounted, even if I wanted to. Just another thing to go on Bill's wishlist for changes to be made to the software.

Hehe. For anyone who knows the story of the frying pan named "Concussion", Val's got a friend with a large rubber mallet named "Persuasion."

Bah. Enough of this work straight into a previously unheard of party stuff. I'm through. This week has already drained me, and I've still got a good 10.5 plus hour day on Friday and am likely working on Saturday as well. That being said, Katie, thanks for the heads up, I'll see what I can do to get there.

Okay. I have work in less than 6 hours with time for a shower and breakfast and lunch preparation factored in, so all my year end stuff is going to have to wait. That being said, I'm going to finish with the end of my anger post that was going to go up last night but I was having my blog converted: "and if anyone wants to argue that issue with me please feel free, I have an unfinished basement full of gardening tools. And if that didn't click with your little conservative minds, put simply, I have well over four dozen unothodox ways to end your life and plenty of space to hide the evidence."

Speaking of which. Katie's next, but after a suprise party gets thrown on me and then suprise D&D atop that, I really don't have the time nor the presence of mind to get it done in any way remotely close to properly.

PLACEHOLDER: Speculation on how Evil Nikhil's taking the new UPS Store rates.

Just for the record folks, that's me warning Katie in her profile, and not the reverse. 'Course if you cannot tell that from the writing style tis a sad day, but well, everyone can't be on top of their game every day, now can they?

Just an addendum. Jeff, I probably ought to add "dragging you to give blood with me" just because I figure it'll give me a goal to accomplish.

Anyways. Avalon is a good complex relationship comic and now I understand all the references Life of Riley made. Course, if you figure out how to tell the male characters apart, please inform me.

Alright. Let's get this little High School Ending show on the road. So. Starting at a totally random point. Despite what I said a few posts ago, there really won't be any definate form to this, and yes it might get a bit touchy here and there, but bear with me or buzz-off, your call.

Jeff, I gotta say thanks for being there, for agreeing with me, and being my ego punching bag. You've basically been background music for me this year and I'm kinda sorry about that. In college, when the crowd clears and we find ourselfs flung into a different world I pray that I'll find the time to actually be a friend in more than just semi-occasional online chats. As for that statement, mind playing moral compass for the first few months if you've got nothing better to do? I tend to be too freaking impressionable (yes, Colin did just say that, and yes, it is very very true. He likes being accepted everywhere cause there's a thrill in not only being able to wander, but knowing a good deal of everyone wherever one wanders) with new people. Anyways. You get three out of me, (Yeah I know there isn't a noun there but I don't make light promises and not much I'll be giving anyone by way of my word will be quite that heavy, I should think). Anyways, here goes. 1) You and I are going to beat Halo together, late afternoon and gaming night only because you've got to play the game with focus and sunlight is a b*tch for ruining that. And we're going to do it with style. We're going to talk, laugh, do everything I've been meaning to do, and the whole time be pumping aliens full of lead and energy with a side of grenades. Wow. That wasn't worded at all like I meant, but the point gets across I think. 2) (I never should have taken a pause in the middle, that'll cost me) My assistance in just about anything the world could throw at you. Yeah, this does really apply to everyone, but it goes here first simply because if anyone got the short end of the stick in any of my friendships, it'd be you, ponder that one for awhile dear reader. 3) Privledges to any good comics I find, cause lord knows I just realized that I have well over 4k pages of comics that I've read. I mean, MT is up over 400, Avalon and Real Life are daily and both reach back to '99, I'll have to do a mass reread in the course of a month and start posting links to the good ones. Or just the random ones like This.

There you go. The first, but not for any particular reason. That being said. I'm not posting another one at the instant, I think the way the whole thing ended up being phrased gives you an idea of why, n'est-ce pas (I've been using that line alot lately).