Catching Up

I've finally got a free evening with no plans, and although I got myself dressed and prepared to drive over to the Orleans and play some more Omaha, I decided against it. It's already after 7:00 o'clock, and I have to be at job #1 at 8:15 in the morning to do all the paperwork and such.

BTW, a little follow-up to that last brief post. I've been getting a lot of emails and facebook messages asking about where I work. Sorry, but that info stays in the vault. It's nothing personal, I'm not telling anyone except people in my family and my local circle of friends. Besides, one of the jobs will almost certainly be done with at the end of July, and at that time, if they cut me loose, I'll be more than happy to spill all the beans.

It's just that last time around, some numb-nuts came into my room to say hello and started bragging up my mad writing skillz to anyone and everyone who would listen, and then I gained a few more regular readers, one of them being my boss. So after that I was constantly being carped on for what I could and couldn't say, and of course if there was anything juicy that happened like some drunk getting out of line or a fight breaking out on graveyard shift, I could never write about it. And that truly sucked. So this time around, I'm keeping a low profile--even my buddies back in Phoenix don't know where I'm working, nor does anyone from the T2V board, either. Maybe now I'll be able to tell some better stories.

So last night, when I made my post-Omaha post, I was still wide awake. And even though I knew I had to get up at 8:30, I stayed up and watched the two-hour series finale of 24. Yes folks, our long national nightmare is finally over--all the terrorists have finally been vanquished, and all the bad guys are either dead, disgraced, or on the run. It started to get tedious for me when the Roy Orbison of the Middle East took a starring role this season, and it really went downhill after Agent Walker (oooh la la...) took a bullet. On the other hand, with the end of this show comes the end of my favorite drinking game of all time--every time somebody at CTU says the word 'protocols', you take a shot. Talk about a Tuesday hangover...

Anyhow, after watching that, I tossed and turned for a few hours before waking up ten minutes before my alarm went off. Once I showered, shaved, and got dressed, I headed back down to the Strip for my orientation at job #2. It only took a couple of hours, and it was relatively painless. The only bummer of the new job is that I have to wear black & whites instead of the more comfy sport-shirt uniforms that the permanent dealers wear. They just don't have enough uniforms on hand for all the newbie temps, so I'll be wearing my Golden Gate gear again, minus, of course, the bow tie, suspenders, and garter.

And also, my dreams of World Series glory have been dashed again for another year, as I found out that I start working for real on Friday night--I work four swing shifts in a row, all the way through the holiday weekend, and I'm on call the two nights after that. As far as getting my schedule to jive with job #1, it shouldn't be too much of a problem. I'll be working day shift there, and could likely swing early outs on the days where I'm doing doubles. At least that's my plan, but as you all know, nothing is ever easy.

Once I got home from the orientation, I kinda dozed on the couch for awhile. But then I got a phone call, and I saw that it was from job #1. I tried to answer it, but the touch screen on my piece of shiat LG Xenon phone was completely unresponsive. I couldn't answer the phone, and after it stopped ringing, I couldn't even get to voicemail to retrieve the message. Nothing worked. Suddenly my expensive 'smart phone' turned into nothing more than an overpriced digital pocket watch.

It's amazing how vulnerable you feel without access to a phone, as mine was deader than fried chicken, and about as useful as a shovel with no handle. I panicked a bit, then headed out to get a replacement. Of course the morons at the AT&T store were no help--oh, they could send it in and get a warranty replacement for me, but in the meantime, all I could do was buy a new phone at full retail price. The shittiest of the cheapos sells for $250 bucks if you don't get a new contract, and since my contract is only six months old, I'm not eligible for a phone upgrade unless I get a bunch of add-ons and get an iPhone. Fark that. I'm already paying a hundred bucks a month for service...

So I went to Best Buy--same story there, they can't sell replacement phones, only upgrades with new contracts. So I hit Costco, where I originally bought it--nope, no help there, either. By this time, my frustration with AT&T was coming to a full-boil, and I was none too happy with LG Electronics, either. Finally, I made it to Walmart, spent $60 on a cheap-ass Go-phone, put my old sim-card in it, and I was good to go. Unfortunately, none of my contacts were on my sim card, they're all stored in the phone's memory, so I have lost every single phone number in my directory.

I had to break out my old-school address book to call Mamasan a few hours ago, and I had her call me back a couple of times just so I could get my initial settings done. I have no idea how to get all that old data transferred over, because I don't think it's on the chip with the music and photo files, and the touch screen is completely fried, so I can't even bring up a list of contacts. Piece of shiat--I'll *never* buy anything from LG ever again. Should've stuck with Motorola--never had a problem at all with their phones. And this 'go phone' doesn't seem to have a slot for that chip, anyways. The more I think about it, I *might* be able to bring up the contact list from the keypad and manually write down everyone's numbers, but that's a project I really don't want to tackle at this very moment.

Anyhow, that little problem and field trip took about three hours out of my afternoon, and I still don't feel like I've gotten enough sleep. So tomorrow morning is gonna be all about the Five-Hour Energy and a Power Bar on the way in to job #1. Oh, and I finally did retrieve the message--they just had a couple of questions about my new Gaming registration--when I first applied, it had expired, but since I've been hired, I've renewed it through job #2, so there is some confusion afoot at the human resources office.

But that's the news from here on a Tuesday night. As much as I'd like to go out and play some more Omaha, I'm gonna stick around the house, maybe order some Chinese food, and watch The Deadliest Catch for a few hours before going to bed early.

Later,

Mikey