Gunslingers, Guides and Google

The word of the week is basically.

May 24 – Vic Daze

Being a holiday, I managed to take the day off work and tried to spend a good part of it relaxing. It worked, for the most part, though I didn’t manage to reach a Zen state or anything close. For the most part, I tried to fix my parents old laptop, and finally got it booting in the late afternoon under Windows XP. From there it was hours of work to install Windows Vista, which I also owned – hard and slow work with only 512mb of RAM, but I got it done. I left it chugging away at updates overnight at the end. Maybe when I’m done and the little monster is fully functional, I’ll treat it to a skin from Gelaskins.com, which has some very cool custom artwork that you can smooth over the top of your laptop, cheaply too.

I’m an observant listener, a skill most necessary for being a writer – you have to pay attention to what people say, how they say it and all the things they aren’t saying that layer around the words themselves. Which means that when I hear things that repeat, I tend to pick up on them, especially local trends in language. Much like the ubiquitous ‘yes/no’ that has pervaded some people’s speech for the last few years( and thankfully seems on the decline )another word I have heard a lot of lately is ‘basically’. Words tend to stand out sometimes, like suddenly being able to see the same model of car in the traffic around you one day, whereas before it was all a sea of the same moving metal. It’s an odd skill, but one I find fascinating when it rears itself.

May 25 – Gunning for invention

Before work today I picked up a copy of Red Dead Redemption from Best Buy, which came with a bonus download for a War Horse – I’ll add it to the game later once I have some time to play with it. I had to wait until today to get it, as all the local retailers have been out of stock since last week’s release date. I flipped through the manual briefly on my break at work and liked what I saw – I also checked the CD for scratches, as I always do when I purchase a DVD... sometimes those little plastic tabs that hold the disc in place break during shipping, and I’ve had to return several DVD sets over the years as they’ve been badly damaged as the bits scratched away at the surface while they were handled in transit. Wasteful.

Hmmm... this is a cool place to surf: Inventorspot.com, which showcases the wildly wonderful things that human imagination can come up with, for the world to see. Very cool indeed, and with a fair lack of As Seen On TV-style plastic crapola made in China, at least from what I’ve seen to date.

May 26 – Cloudy Skies Out West

Today I spent a good deal of the day playing Red Dead Redemption, simply exploring the game world in general. So far, it’s been a solid experience; instead of being railroaded into storylines, the game seems to wait patiently for you to make a choice and then guides you down that path. Great stuff.

It’s been a blah, blah week here weather-wise, with nothing but solid layers of clouds and only occasional rain day to day. Sometimes the sun cuts through in the early morning or late evening as it ducks below the cloud layer, but I’ve been surprised by the cool temperatures and continual grey that have manifested this week – very unlike the usual changeable BC weather here on Vancouver Island. Still, no smog and no heatwave is fine by me, considering how stinking hot it was here last year at this time.

May 27 – Not my sick day?

Darn it all, the world of bacon has been pretty quiet lately, with not a lot to report... save that a recent vote has come up with the best bacon flavour name in the world. I think it has potential, and I’ll try to figure out a way to test it out myself one of these days. Not having a BBQ or deep-fryer here does make things a tad difficult, but I’m sure I’ll figure out a way somehow.

Not much to write about today work-wise; one of the girls called in sick with the 24-hour bug that’s been going around, so I hung in from 8am to 7pm to ensure we had proper coverage for the day. One thing that MMart doesn’t do is hire part-time staff; for the massive amount that CSR’s have to remember to do every day in their jobs, being here less than 25 hours a week doesn’t work to keep on top of the workload and training. Part of being fully-staffed in the near future means being able to call people in to cover days like today, so that’s another goal of mine to reach sooner rather than later.

May 28 - Yep

It’s interesting to see how people develop their social networks over the course of their lives; I remember reading an article years ago( and think I still have clipped, somewhere )about how many people an individual encounters with ‘friend potential’ over the course of their lives. I believe the number was around 2500 or so, with urban dwellers having a higher pool to work with compared to small-town folks, obviously. I’ll have to dig up the article, as I believe it also went into the differences between friends, acquaintances and co-workers – important to know if you just lump everyone into one big list.

Yeah, a very stressful day at work; things of late have been very, very punishing to me mentally, and I’m finding my short-term memory is not 100%. Forgetting some little details is becoming easier, and I hate that – HATE it, as it shows a mental weakness that I thought I’d never suffer from. Still, I do my best, and can only hope that as the summer progresses that running two stores will prove easier than I thought. Considering the levels of stress I’m dealing with at work, I should really be making far more an hour than I am... and that adds to my stress levels all the more. Ironic, eh?

May 29 – Sun and Sleep

Some sunshine peeked through the clouds today, on and off, culminating in some decent rays by evening – it was good to feel the sun on my face as I left work. Especially as each day now seems to fly by in an orgy of over-responsibility and paperwork, which really comes as no surprised but is unwelcome all the same. Having fun on the job seems reduced to making jokes in between cranky customers, fixing problems caused by staff and generally trying to plug as many leaks in a day as possible before new ones start the process all over again the next day. If they made Valium cappuccinos, I might just buy a box soon. Maybe if I had a yacht like this one, I could pop down to Victoria harbour and sail off for the rest of the weekend. Nothing like having a supercar in a garage on your own private yacht, right?

At least I’m sleeping a little better this week; the new curtains and some earplugs are working well together. As well, I’m cutting back on my caffeine for the day, limiting myself to a tea or two in the afternoon and none in the morning, in the thinking that the less I have the more effective they will be. Also, too many in a day really messes up your body clock; I’ve been reading this guide to rebooting your sleep cycle from Lifehacker.com and it makes a lot of sense. More on how effective it’s been as I go.

May 30 – Bang Bang TV

Holy lost hours Batman... after breakfast I hopped onto Xbox Live with Red Dead Redemption, to find five of my friends also playing it. Six hours or so later I had to call a stop, as my game was steadily getting worse. From winning a solid streak of games in a row( go me! )I went to holding up the bottom end of the scoreboard – annoying and frustrating, but I think it was just the week’s stress catching up to me on top of being tired. Not a good combo.

So, in the evening I did my best to de-stress by watching streaming episodes of Farscape on the big TV, looking damn good for all of it being free – and 24/7 too! I still think this is the future of the media; the recently announced Google TV will do away with the ‘tyranny’ of unwanted channels on your cable box cluttering up your choices with programs you have no interest in( sports, in my case ). It will be fascinating to see how the next ten years sees a shakeout in the media,

All for now – my head’s killing me and I have a 12-hour day to look forward to, on a Monday no less. Ick.