a sucker born every minute

I don't say it often enough, but I've learned quite a bit since starting my position four years ago. It's pretty cool to see the stuff I learned in marketing and management courses in college put into action, and especially so when it has an impact on my store's bottom line.

Working in the restaurant business has also made me more aware of the cost of goods, particularly what restaurants and concessions pay for items.

Like when I went to the 49ers game on Sunday (p.s. -- I had the best seats ever to see them lose-- lower box seven rows from the field on the 49ers' 5th yard line) and see them selling 20 ounce bottles of Coca-Cola for $4.50 that cost (are you ready for this?) $.89. Eighty nine cents. They're selling it for $4.50.

I'm still getting over this blatant price gouging! Needless to say I quenched my thirst with ice cold freshly-squeezed lemonade.

And that ran me $5.25.

sitting, waiting, wishing

I'm at work right now, waiting on an electrician to come provide me with a dedicated circuit and pull CAT5 wire for my new project.

We're upgrading our payment processing at long last. We've been processing credit cards over dial-up and the wait was becoming more than unbearable, but in order to upgrade our credit card processing, we had to upgrade our entire terminals to allow DSL.

I like to say we're upgrading our current POS (piece of shit) for a new POS (point of service).

Things didn't go as planned along the way, and no matter how much time you allow in the planning stages for bumps, somehow it's never enough. That's not me being negative, I'm just being honest. I've been regularly emailing Heidi, my new best friend at AT&T, and she's been talking me through all the hoops I've had to jump through to get DSL service at one of my two locations. It's odd when you can hear exasperation in an email, and Heidi was sending some emails heavy with it.

For the most part, we've got it all straightened out, and I'm up and running on pretty much the coolest POS ever at the first location. It even has an integrated server, so that we don't have to waste non-existant space in the back for a server.

My second location has run into a couple of snags, the most important being an extensive delay due to first, an error of some sort that needed to be cleared on their end (when I first was talking to Heidi about this problem, I couldn't distinguish her saying "error" from "air" -- I thought she was saying AT&T needed to "clear the air," which made absolutely no sense) and second, a lack of physical resources in the area where the install was to take place. Looks like that's been cleared -- the error or air, whichever -- and we're all set to go. "Go live," that is, which is the horrifically techie term for Wednesday when my second site will be up and running.

Our programming manager for this install turned out to be a pretty cool guy and I've inquired about positions with his company. Not that I'm seriously considering leaving, but I think I missed my calling by not going into the tech field. In college, I never even considered it as a program of study, it was akin to studying, say, math. Well, maybe not that bad, but it certainly didn't have the appeal of international relations, my emphasis in political science.

So I'm still waiting for this electrician to come by. He was supposed to come by last week, but something came up. He was supposed to be by Monday morning, but something came up. Same thing for Monday afternoon, Wednesday morning and Wednesday afternoon. I'm pretty much tired of waiting for this guy, needless to say, but the end result will be worth all this waiting.

I think.

(As you may have guessed, this was written on the BB so 'scuse any misspellings.)

six word sunday: Bozo quickly departed for greener pastures.

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Six Word Sunday challenge

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contractual obligation

I've been purposely trying to spice up my life by trying new activities.

Like the tennis lessons I took over the summer.

Like the Photoshop class I took before that.

Like this, something different in terms of volunteering. (Which, by the way, was a blast! Trying to find bargains for the little girl I shopped with was awesome.)

Now I've signed up for guitar lessons. I took guitar a mere 18 years ago (!) -- I don't feel like I'm old enough to say I did anything 18 years ago. At any rate, I already own a guitar, it was simply signing up for lessons that was required.

It's much harder than I remember it being, and after the first class I was more than a bit frustrated that my fingers didn't remember the chord positions. But music is a "use it or lose it" skill and I definitely lost it. (The skill, that is. I quite nicely held my composure, thankyouverymuch.)

We were sent home after the first class with instructions to learn a simple song in our course book. Much to my surprise, I was anxious to get home after work the next day to be able to practice the song we were assigned. I'm sure my neighbors are already tired of my practicing, but once I started to really get the song down, I didn't want to stop playing. I sat there for over two hours (!) playing the three-fourths of the same song over again, making sure I got it right before tackling the last measure that was the toughest. It pains me a bit to say that I still have not gotten that down completely, but I'm getting there.

Slowly.

you like? you like?

Borat is coming soon!

google and...yahoo?

Anyone else find this interesting, as Google owns Blogger and Yahoo owns Flickr?

I have the urge to sing the Beatles' "We Can Work It Out."

six word sunday: some day she will buy it

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Six Word Sunday challenge

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stolen bandwith survey

1. The age I will be on my next birthday:


2. Favorite color:



3. Last thing I ate:


4. Bad habits:


5. Favorite fruit:


6. Favorite animal:


7. Town I live in:



8. Name of my pets:

N/A


9. My first name:


10. My last name:

photo friday: bright

AT&T Park
San Francisco (Go Giants!)

Photo Friday

"the ultimate blog post"

Oh, those writers at Wired are funn-nay!

Here's an exerpt from this article:

""Blog" itself is short for "weblog," which is short for "we blog because we weren't very popular in high school and we're trying to gain respect and admiration without actually having to be around people."

Creating your own blog is about as easy as creating your own urine, and you're about as likely to find someone else interested in it. One popular technique for building readership is to send e-mail to more well-trafficked blogs offering to exchange links with them. One popular response from those blogs is to laugh derisively and hit the Delete button."

Ain't that the truth!

six word sunday: hot fun in the sticky summertime

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photo friday: boy

Photo Friday
(Lomo style!)

suri you're joking

They better start the therapy fund now.

(For what it's worth, here's my take on the whole thing: the baby looks Asian. Or at the very least like she has Chris Klein's almond-shaped eyes. Oh yeah, and that's a heckuva lotta hair for a three month old, as the pix were supposedly taken in July. But her cuteness is definitely growing on me.)

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six word sunday: it was a recipe for disaster.

for the
Six Word Sunday challenge (Lomo style!)

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photo friday: silver

Photo Friday