Are people that stupid?

I ran into Walmart last night (yes, yes evil corporate giant.. I needed some wall hooks ok?) and as I was rushing through the store I heard two Walmart employees talking. This is how the conversation went:

Employee1 - So someone was in here looking for Kosher Salt today.

Employee2 - So?

Employee1 - Well, I mean do we even have Kosher salt?

Employee2 - I think so, I mean it has to be in one of the food aisles. I've never actually looked for it though

Employee1 - Well we found the Salt, but none of it said it was kosher.

Employee2 - Oh, well maybe we don't have any then.

Employee1 - Well I told the guy to take the regular salt because all Kosher salt is is regular salt only cheaper, right?

Employee2 [Sharp intake of breath] You didn't say that!!?!? Did YOU!??!

I missed Employee1's response because I turned around to look at him after hearing that ridiculously stupid comment and ended up walking into a blender display.

The Apartment is coming along...

Although I have decided that a lot of the furniture that I moved from the old apartment is going to need to be replaced. IKEA road trips (now only half hour away) have already been started and I plan on pretty much replacing quite a bit of what I have.

Looking at the old furniture in the new apartment (which is a lot brighter than the old one) made me realize that it needed to be changed. My old [IKEA] Iglo bookshelves now look cheap as hell and will soon be replaced my Ikea's Billy series.

The old entertainment center has already been replaced, by something I can't link to since it is apparently too new to Ikea's stock to be on the website. But I like it a lot.

Also purchased 3 new Kilby bookcases in the bedroom (I have a lot of books), in addition to a new"Jerker" Desk (the desk with an unfortunate name) to replace the desk I had built to fit the cramped quarters of the old apartment.

I have also recieved 2 new "Lack" end tables as a housewarming gift and plan on getting a KOLSVIK coffee table in the near future.

Who new that moving would cause me to feel the need to spend exorbitant amounts of money on things I don't really need to buy from trendy Norweigen people?

Edit: Apparently Ikea doesn't like external linking.. sorry.

Revealing my Inner Geek

I just purchased Half-Life 2 yesterday and am looking forward to playing it a bit this weekend, I am just afraid that 'a bit' may turn into quite a few hours. Hours I should be spending getting my apartment in order.

Why didn't I play it yesterday? I was too busy playing the last night of the World of Warcraft Open beta with a friend.

I am a pretty hardcore gamer, I mean I am usually - I go through phases where I don't play games for while at all, but I am a bit nervous about HL2. It is being heralded as one of the, if not the best game ever made and I tend to get sucked into these type of games until I am done. I remember whey I played Deus Ex for the first time I would stay up until 3 or 4 in the morning playing it for the couple weeks it took me to play (nights I had to work the next day... so? I function fairly well at work as a zombie).

The thing that is scaring me about HalfLife2 is that while the game itself may be only 20-30 hours long by most accounts, it comes bundled with the updated Counterstrike online game, which I am sure I will become addicted to, just like I was addicted to the original. And it's not just that - Valve (Hl2's creators) are making it ridiculously easy for user created addon 'missions' so there is some more time there.

I ask you, with all this time being taken up by HalfLife2 - where will I find time to play Vampire:Bloodlines? Final Fantasy Online? Word of Warcraft(releases next tuesday). Or the Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay for PC when it comes out next month? Not to mention that moving put a halt to me finishing Doom3 halfway through and I would like to go back and finish that one.

How am I going to find time to play all these games and still have a real life?
I guess I'll just have to quit my job. Anyone want to give me some money for rent? Haha.

I should be thankful I never let myself get an XBox (halo 2 anyone?) or PS2 (metalgear solid 3) or GameCube (Metroid 2) or I would really be in trouble.

All moved in.

Just a small update.

Saturday went well, although I had no idea that the two flights of steps would have taken such a toll on my calves. Still feeling them today. (Move = Sat, Today = Tuesday).

I am very much liking the new place, although it isn't totally set up yet (of course).

From what little I have seen of my neighbors they seem nice and friendly. The best thing about the place is the fact that it is so quiet. The sound of footsteps above me had become almost an accepted norm, but the lack of them in the new place is very pleasing on a primal level.

Most boxes and other things are currently in a closet (a big one) awaiting my final desicion on furniture placement, so the place is pretty sparse looking. But it is still 1billion times better than my old apartment.

On a related note...

Old landlord had called and left a message saying he was going to take out $200 from my security for 'professional cleaning'.
10 minutes later, before I even knew that message existed, his wife (my old landlady) calls back and says her husband is a dick and she is sending me the whole deposit back.
So, I didn't need to threaten or go to court.. hooraay! (as long as I get that check that is).

More at some point.. still no internet at new place.

The day before the big move..

This is it! I go sign my lease and pick up my keys in a couple hours.

I am so happy to be getting out of my current apartment. My landlord actually tried to guilty me last night into staying. He said something to the effect of 'You are putting us in a very bad position, we still haven't found anyone to take the place next month.'

This what I wanted to say:
Excuse me? I gave you something like 45 days notice, and even talked the place up to the people you brought in to look at it. I tried to rent that apartment for you since you seemed incapable of doing so yourself. It could be me, but I think maybe you can't rent the place since you are attempting to charge $300 more dollars a month more than I was paying (which the place wasn't really worth). Or maybe it is because you lied your ass off about everything on that rental ad and when the people see it isn't what you advertised they run the hell away.

This is what I said:
That's a shame, hope you find someone soon.

To which he responded with a dejected grunt.

Oh well, can't please or reason with some people.

Tomorrow, with the help of friends and family, will be a resident of CT. Not sure how I feel about that really. I like CT, but I have been living in NY for my whole life, and know it well. Part of me is reluctant to let that go, but a larger part is eager to see what lays ahead.

At least I know the place I will be living is 100% nicer than the one I am living in now. So that means a lot.

All I have to do is make sure I get that security deposit back tomorrow and I will be golden. They have already indicated that this may be a problem - despite the fact that my apartment is damage free and sparkling clean (now that I have actually gotten around to cleaning).
If they mess with me on this one, they will be the ones who end up paying. I know the IRS's phone number after all, and know that in the 5 1/2 years I have been living there they haven't paid a cent of my rent to the government.
I hope it doesn't come to that, and that the threat of it will be enough of them (if reason fails) but we shall see.

Now I just have to try and survive without an internet connection for 96 hours. Won't be easy on this internet addict.

Oh, by the way, I am moving.

Yes, after months of searching I am finally going to be getting out of this place. I am a bit sad to be leaving NY, but I will get over it. Besides, I will be back fairly often to visit my parents on their requisite monthly visits.

The new apartment is really nice, a lot bigger, a lot brighter, and a lot nicer in general. The real prize winning feature is that it is on the third (top) floor. So no more stomping above my head while I am trying to sleep. Oh, and it's a little cheaper too, which is always nice.

I'm signing the lease sometime this week/early next, and on the 30th I am enlisting help from friends and family (although I hate being 'the guy who asked for help to move this weekend') and packing all my worldly possessions on a truck bound for Shelton, CT.

Wish me luck!

Blogging done?

Well, if anyone reads this - I can say, no - well not completely.
I am going to make new posts here and there, but the lack of traffic/comments kind of made me feel like I was wasting my time. I know it takes a long time to build up a reader-base but this was just a test to see if I liked blogging anyway.. sooo... maybe I will try it out some more later.

All you need to know about Blockbuster Online

It sucks.

They only managed to send me 5 DVDs in 2 weeks. Every movie I rented from them was returned the day of/day after I recieved it.
Compared to Netflix - which averages around 5-6 movies a week.

I just cancelled my Blockbuster online account and am sticking with Netflix :)

World of Warcraft Beta

Well I finally got into the World of Warcraft beta.. too bad it's so late into the whole beta-process. Just about anyone who wants in at this point is getting in [considering they are now in public stress test and all] :)

Going to finally be able to see what all the hype is about! I am pretty excited about the potential of this Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game (MMORPG) and hope it doesn't suck like so many of the others I have tried.

More on this as my beta experience progresses.

Got some Gmail invites if you want them

Following in the footsteps of my friend Scott over at Blankbaby I figured I would offer my extra Gmail invites to any readers who stumble across this - put your email addy in the comments section and I will send over the invites I have on a first-come first-serve basis.

Clerks Sequel?!?

10 years after the original cult hit, Kevin Smith has announced a sequel to the movie that put him on the map in hollywood. It will begin filming this coming January on a ridiculously small budget (by today's standards).

I am pretty excited about it - here's the CNN Article.

The Girl Next Door

So, upon a recommendation from someone I know, I rented The Girl Next Door from netflix this week. I wasn't too sure about it, I mean from the way it had been advertized I expected a lame Amercian Pie clone.

I must say, I was pleasantly surprised. Yes, the movie was about an ex-porn star Danielle aka Athena [played by Elisha Cuthbert] who moves to the suburbs after deciding she wants to leave the industry. But it really isn't about her.

The focus of the movie centers around the do-nothing life of the main character Matthew Kidman [Emile Hirsh]. Matthew's life gets turned upside down after meeting Danielle and falling in love with her.

Complications abound, of course, most of them caused by "Athena's" gritty semi-scitzophrenic producer Kelly [believably played by
Timothy Olyphant].

I must say I truly enjoyed the movie, which - as I alluded to above - surprised me.

As for Elisha Cuthbert, who truly is easy on the eyes, I was also pleasantly surprised. She was believable in this movie, in both 'modes' [girl next door and porn sex kitten] which made me decide that she could, in fact, act. Up until this point I thought otherwise, in fact I had to stop watching 24 mainly because of her character annoyed me to no end. Now I think that perhaps she is good enough an actress that she can play an annoying character and make me hate her. Which, I guess, is a good thing? :)

All in all I say this movie is more than worth your time. In fact, I sat through all the DVD extras as well - which is something I almost never do.

Roleplaying Game [Geek] Humor

If any of you were geeks like me in junior high/highschool you probably have mixed memories of roleplaying game sessions with your friends.

Depending on the crowd you played with, you probably had an experience at least somewhat similar to the current comic over at VG Cats. It made me chuckle and brought back some memories.

I can't permalink over to it so check out #116 if it's been updated by the time you read this.

Netflix Competition

Well Blockbuster.com has finally opened up it's online DVD mail service. The first real contender with any real possibility to knock Netflix down a peg.

I love Netflix, I think it's a great service - but I have also just now signed up for blockbuster.com's free trial. They give you two weeks free, 3 movies at a time, no late fees - exactly like netflix. The two differences I have noticed so far?
- Blockbuster charges only $19.99 as opposed to neflix's $21.99.
- Netflix seems to have much more of a selection.

I will post my review on the service (delay in movie shipments, etc.) in a couple weeks. For those who are interested, or don't want to wait - go try it free for a couple weeks yourself at Blockbuster.

Tired of XP's look?

I am very into the whole 'skinning and customization' of windows scene. Someday I will set up a scrapbook with screenshots of all the variations my desktops have gone through over the years.

Anyone who is even remotely interested in this type of thing should go check out
AlienGUIse.

It's free and pretty damn nifty. It uses a slimmed down version of Stardock's theme manager/object desktop suite. Which I have been using for years now. Stardock's software allows for complete customization of a PC.

Alienware's new offering does the same thing - the only hitch is right now there are only 2 skins for it, and both of them are (of course) alienware branded. This doesn't bother me, since I own (and love) my alieware PC. But it may bother some of you.

Either way, it couldn't hurt to
look.

Note: Due to the fact that this just happened today as well as the fact that it is pretty damn popular it may take a few trys to download, since Alienware's servers are being hammered at the moment.

Teleportation not that far away?

I know some of my Startrek loving friends would make some kind of 'beaming' joke at this point, but I will refrain.

We aren't talking about physical matter yet - only light. But it is still very impressive.

You can keep your flying cars, I want to be able to walk into a small closet-sized device and walk out a similar one 100 miles away.

"Physicists have carried out successful teleportation with particles of light over a distance of 600m across the River Danube in Austria."

"Quantum teleportation could be harnessed for fast, powerful computers or communication networks."

Check the BBC article here!

New workaholic salesman alert!

As you can tell from the title, there is a new salesman at my company. For those of you who are reading this and don't know me.. if there are any.. I work as a Database Manager for a printing and direct mail company.

Now, we are by no means a large company - maybe 50 regular employees plus temps when needed. It is a pretty laid-back place - for the most part. We have a few nutcase work-a-holics who come in everyday to annoy everyone else - but for the most part we go with the flow.

They just hired a new salesman, who comes from a big-corporate background. He has been here for two weeks and still hasn't come to realize that we aren't IBM. Here, when we want to talk to someone, we don't schedule a meeting - we pick up a phone or walk over and talk.

So, this new salesman - I will call him Bob, decides that he needs to talk to the mail department heads. He sends us e-mails to schedule a meeting, confirms via telephone and sets up a 30 minute long powerpoint presentation on something that would have normally taken 2 minutes of conversation time.

Who was at the meeting? Bob, me, and one other person. I swear it must've taken him (at least) 3 hours to prepare this presentation and 'pamplets' for the attendees.

I give him another month before he realizes what kind of company this is, and quits. He seems to be too much of an overachiever to actually work here :)

I will admit the colors were pretty though.

In a quandry...

Sooo.. my life just got a little more complicated! Haha!

Last year, in September, I recieved a call from a former employer asking me if I would like to come back to work there. The pay was better, I wasn't really happy where I was currently - so I said yes. I was then put on hold until March. After that, I pretty much had given up on the possibility of it ever happening, and promptly forgot about it.

Fast-forward 11 months from first call.

Those of you who have seen my posts here know that I am thinking about moving - in fact I am actively searching for a new place to live. Yes, that is right, I am planning on moving from NY [ the greatest state in the world] to Connecticut [the, um, state next to NY].

I work in CT, I know people in CT, and I (for some reason) like it there. My job has gotten better, got a nice raise, they are talking about another raise/promotion happening in the next few months (which may or may not happen, depending).

Yesterday, I get a call from the VP of the other company that had wanted me a year ago. He says things are finally happening and he hopes I am still interested in working there. I tell him 'sure' since I don't believe in slamming doors and he tells me that he has emailed me a proposal that he wants me to look at.

So now I am faced with the choice between a few grand more per year [and staying in NY] but I would have to work another 5-10 hours a week for it. Or moving to CT like I had planned - keeping this job until I found something better at one of the larger CT cities I would now be able to commute to, and continuing to work anywhere from 30-35 hours a week.

Actually, now that I typed all that out I am leaning toward telling this guy it's too late. What do you think?

Scott says I should update.

So, my good friend Scott over at Blankbaby has informed me that he would like me to update this blog.

I had decided to keep this blog on hold for a bit, since pretty much anything I post at this point will sound negative, and I really would like this to be a happy place :)

I am still looking for a new apartment, my current landlord is still leaving workmen alone in my apartment - I came home last thursday and everything had been moved. Yes, you read that right. They were poking around in my entertainment center and TV stand in my living room, looking at the papers on my desk in my bedroom, and moved around things on my dresser, as well as the TV stand in my bedroom. They even went so far as to move furniture that I had pushed to one side of my living room so they could get into a closet there. Things in my living room had been covered in sheets (since my landlord has still not completely fixed the hole in my living room ceiling), and upon coming home I noticed that the sheets had obviously all been removed - since they were now covering different pieces of furniture.

My landlord, of course, "was in the apartment the whole time" but couldn't tell my when/how all that happened. Strange, you would think they would have noticed all that activity. I was then told "I may have left them alone for 5 minutes". That, roughly translated from evil landlord speak means, 'They said they needed to get in there for something, so I unlocked the door for the day and gave them the run of the place while I was out front gardening and landscaping.'

Oh well.

I will update when I am in a better mood or searching for a new place isn't taking up all my time.

Micro-Review of: I, Robot.

Aside from the fact that the movie has little to do with the book by Asimov (or so I am told, since I never read it), I thought the movie was pretty good. The acting was decent, some of the writing/dialog was a little cheesy("you are the dumbest smart-person I know!" Oh yeah, well "you are the dumbest dumb-person I know!." OH, SNAP!)
Special effects were pretty damn good - I actually forgot that I was watcing CGI robots running around on screen (which is, in and of itself, a testimonial to how well done they were).
All in all, it was a good sci-fi action flick, and as I commented to my friend Scott after we saw it, I think (if they changed the ending) that it would have been great prequel to the original Matrix.

All in all, I give it a B.

Apartment hunting sucks!

I can't wait until I find something, this way my life can get back to some semblance of normalcy. I am eating, drinking and breathing apartment hunting at this point.
So far, all my blogging here has had something to do with my current apartment or apartment searching.
Eventually, I will actually discuss things other than apartments! I can't wait.
"What will I discuss?", you may ask.
Hell, I don't know, Video Games, PC Customization, Movies, Books - you know all the things that have taken a backseat to my laudable goal of getting the heck out of my apartment :)

Update: I am going to see these apartments today.

I really didn't expect a callback from this guy about the apartments until one or more of the following occured:

a) I was already home [2 hours away].
b) I was more than halway home [more than an hour away].
c) Winged demon-monkeys from outerspace flew out of my butt [not sure when this will happen but I will let you know when it does. I think they are getting close to looking for a new place to live themselves].

But, amazingly I got the callback! Whoo hoo! And I get to leave work early because of it! SCORE!

Now, I just have to hope the apartments are nifty so I can tell my landlord I am moving when I hand them next months rent :)

In relation to my previous post....

I would also like to add, that if my landlord had felt the need to do something while the electician was in my apartment.. maybe to 'look busy'. He probably should have sheet-rock'ed up the hole in my livingroom ceiling from a plumber's visit 2 weeks ago.

That is all. :)

The time to move has come.

Coming home yesterday I discovered that my landlord had been in my apartment. This, in and of itself is ok, since there was an electrician there doing some maintenance work [I had previously been upset to find out that the last time this happened my landlord left him alone in my apartment for 4 hours and drove to his store 40 minutes away]. The part that irked me more than anything was the fact that while said landlord was in apartment he decided to CLEAN MY KITCHEN.
Now, I would just like to say in my defense that my kitchen is far from dirty, in fact my whole apartment is pretty damn clean. For some reason, this guy decided that it wasn't clean enough for him - and took action. So, upon returning from work, I was assaulted by the smell of cleaning agents.
Now I have been contemplating a move for a while now, even went so far as to look at a few apartments, but this is really getting to me.

My new goal. Find a new apartment and move in by September 1st, 2004.

Wish me luck..