Trying To Maintain A Regularly Weekly Schedule on More Than One Blog

You've probably noticed by now that I'm not exactly doing a great job of posting every Friday. Or, for that matter, even once per week.

I'd love to give you a good reason for it, too.  But I don't have one. I can't wake up and go to work without stumbling across a dozen or so things I dislike that I haven't written about, yet.  I have enough spare time to to write up wiki entries for a fictional version of a nearby city. For a game.  I've managed to read a fair number of the books that came back from GenCon with me, too.  I haven't been travelling, I'm done moving, and my commute is shorter than it was.

So why no updates?

It's simple: I have too many blogs active. There's this one, in which I blow off steam. There's Talking Game, which has been my primary blog for a good long while, now, and is updated weekly because I have genuine paying subscribers. There's New American Things, which updates every time Dasha encounters something new (and I'm there to see it). There's Eric Shoots Things, which I have been using to talk about photography and show off some of what I've done that I'm proud of or don't want to lose.

Only one of them has regular weekly updates.  The others are sporadic.  Because I can really only keep one steady blog at a time.

I know that Kelly over at The Airlock is going to tell me to ditch the others and focus on this one, but that's not really an option.

In fact, trying to maintain a weekly schedule here made it feel like a chore rather than a venting tool. In other words, it was causing more steam than it was venting. And that's not good.

So I'm dropping this back to a sporadic updater. Don't look for weekly updates. Just subscribe to the RSS feed or check back every few weeks.

Maybe life will choose to be extra-frustrating and I'll build up a backlog.

Lingering Con Crud

I mentioned about this time last year that I didn't like con crud very much.

It's even worse when the crud lingers to the point where you fall behind in your postings for one or more blogs because you're going home and sleeping at night instead of writing.

This year's GenCon Crud seems especially pernicious - and, even though I didn't go to PAX, I get to deal with the PAX Crud, too, because one of my co-workers went.  Meaning that I get to suffer the Con Crud from a con I didn't even attend!

And did I mention that, vendor-wise, there was some overlap between PAX and GenCon? This means that the PAX Crud may or may not include the GenCon Crud, so I may or may not be fighting a mutated version of the GenCon Crud all over again - when I'm barely recovered from the last one!

And you can ask my wife: I'm not very fun to be around when I have the Crud.

And I'm not the only person being slowed down by the Crud. One of my favorite game designers/developers recently posted that he's ill, and it's causing delays on several hotly-anticipated projects.

So I'm not the only one out there who dislikes Con Crud.

Not by a long shot.

Time Zones

My wife and I just returned home from a vacation on the East Coast.  It was a good vacation, but we're having trouble adapting to the fact that we're three hours out of sync.

We didn't struggle while we were there, because the convention basically ran 24/7, so we could set our own sleeping hours without any problems.

But, now that we're home, it's hard getting back into sync with the people around us and our normal schedules.

I understand the reason for time zones.  They make sense. Standardization helped the railroads run more accurately.

Of course, if we'd just standardized to one big time zone, then a lot of problems and confusion could have been avoided.  It'd mean that Westerns would have duels at "High two," when the sun is directly overhead.

But it would mean I don't need to re-set my clock when I visit the East Coast. And it'd mean that I don't have to do math to figure out if my flight from Indianapolis is one or two hours long.

And, yes, it's mean that my shift at work would be from five until eleven - but I can handle that.

And I know: It wouldn't fix the jet lag issue.

But I really hate the way things work now.

Unannounced Returns from Hiatus

I follow a lot of blogs.  Too many, in fact. Eventually, I'll need to do something about that.

But, from time to time, one or more of them will go on hiatus.  Maybe the author is burned out or getting married or moving or something.

I understand that Hiatus Happens.  People need that time.  I don't like it, but I understand.  And most authors are good about giving you an idea of when they'll be returning from that hiatus.

But occasionally, I'll visit a webcomic that I'd missed, and I'll discover that they're back from hiatus. And have been for several weeks.  So I need to search the archives and figure out when they returned and start reading from there ...

Some blogs (and webcomics) have really poorly-organized archives, making this an exercise in frustration.

It's especially annoying when it's one of those rare websites that doesn't have an RSS feed that I can follow - following RSS feeds means I don't need to go to your site to learn when you've updated. They're a huge time-saver and make life much easier for your fans.

There are few things online as annoying as looking through poorly-organized archives trying to find the start point for the hiatus so that you can get caught up without spoilers.

NBC's Coverage of the Olympic Games

In recent weeks, I've been watching the Olympic Games.  Why not? They only happen every four two years.  Well ... each event is every four years. But there are Olympic Games every two.

I'm probably the only person out there who will say, "I don't mind the opening ceremonies being tape-delayed in the US."  Because I don't.  It meant I could watch them at the same times as my friends and family.  But I do think that a live online stream would have been nice.

I also think NBC should have given us an alternate audio track.  Seriously.  At times, I thought I was watching Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, with all the ridiculous inane commentary we have come to expect, wherein they tell us what we can plainly see. The worst example of this was the Voldemort puppet.  It appeared (which was awesome). Then it shot sparks from its wand (again: more awesome).  Ten seconds later, I heard, "And there is a 100-foot-tall Voldemort puppet. Its wand can even fire!"  Because, you know, I hadn't been watching.

The worst of it is, all of their opening ceremony gaffes could have been easily done away with.  Seriously.  NBC has about sixteen stations (NBC, CNBC, NBCSports, Bravo ... ). How hard would it have been to put Olympics Opening Ceremonies For Dummies on NBC (like they did), and then given us a version without commentary on one of the other stations?  Seriously.

I know they can do "without commentary."  I've been watching Fencing via their website. Live.  And yes: that does mean I've been up at 2 and 2:20 AM. And it's worth noting that some commentary would be welcome for some events.  I used to fence, years ago, but I've forgotten so very much. Like many of the right-of-way rules for foil and saber fencing.  A refresher would not go awry.

The tape delay also allowed them to insert commercials. Again: I'm okay with it.  I understand and acknowledge that NBC has to pay their bills.

One of my co-workers is irate about the online coverage. He doesn't have TV at home, so he's locked out of watching online without using a proxy to watch the BBC feed.  I have a number of friends who have cut the cords are are watching TV exclusively via Hulu or other (legal) online methods.  I even have friends who watch TV over-the-air.  But if you won't have a cable (or satellite) provider, you can't watch online.

Also of note: if they plan to air something on television later, you can watch it live online, but then you can't watch the replay until after it's aired.  If I want to re-watch this morning's fencing matches, I can. If I want to re-watch this morning's basketball game, I can't.  Not that I'm likely to watch a basketball game in the first place.

And I keep stories like this one, where NBC manages to ruin any sort of surprise for an event bare moments before it airs.  Very much a product of tape delay.

NBC, by the way, has announced that their ratings are so good that they won't be changing much (if anything) for next time.  To which I might quietly suggest that, if it were the only thing available, I'd eat at Taco Bell. Maybe NBC should take a look at a few of their critics - #NBCFail has been trending off-and-on over in Twitter-land since the opening ceremonies.

Their coverage is bad enough that even journalists in other countries have noticed and spoken up.

So yes. It's that bad. And it's likely to get worse.

Inexplicably Slow Service

We're finally done moving, so the next step is - of course - finding all the little hole-in-the-wall restaurants and eateries in our neck of the woods.  So we've been dining out a fair amount.

We went to a place the other night that was ... well, the food was good, but not spectacular.  But the service ... it was really something else.  And not in a good way, either.

When we got there, we seated ourselves after a moment or two of figuring out if we should do so (there were no signs).  Nearly five minutes later, our server appeared with menus in hand, got our drink orders, and vanished.

I should note: It wasn't busy.  There were only two or three occupied tables in the dining area (including us), and a small handful of folks in the bar.  There were a few more people playing pool, too. And I saw at least three staffers (one of whom was keeping bar), so there was not a drastic shortage of staff on hand, either.

We checked out the menu, and then started chatting. I don't know how long it was before our server approached us again, but it was at least another five minutes.  Had it been a particularly deep or unusual menu, I could understand that - but it was neither. It was straightforward bar food (oddly lacking in onion rings) and sandwiches, with one or two house special items which required a moment of reading.

She dropped off our drinks, said, "I'll be right back," and disappeared again.

I should point out: we were sitting, menus closed in front of us, chatting with each other.  It was clear we were ready to order.

We (eventually) ordered without incident, and our appetizer arrived fairly quickly.  A friend had recommended the nachos here, so we had to try them - they were not bad. Not stellar, but not bad.

When we finished the nachos, it was another wait for our entrees. When they arrived, the food was decent.  The server was pleasant when she felt like wandering past the table, and she did refill my iced tea. Eventually. When she wasn't leaning against the bar and chatting with the bartender.

Once dinner was done, we enjoyed another wait for our check. "Enjoyed" is not quite the right word for it. "Endured" might be better. She also didn't try to sell us on dessert - she just dropped the check and vanished again. But that's neither here nor there.

Once we had our check, it was another wait for her to come and collect the payment.

We should have been in and out in about forty minutes. Maybe forty-five.  As it is, it was close to an hour and a half before we were done. With no reason for the delay.

We won't be back any time soon.

When Blogs Go On Hiatus

We're now a full week into it, and it hurts to move.  I've been going to the old place most weeknights and packing up some boxes and hauling some things down to the new place.

As a direct result, it hurts to move. And I don't have time to follow my usual routine - no writing, for example, causing delays in all of the blog for which I have burned through my cushion.  Including this one.

I can keep one blog up and running. Probably. But keeping two blogs up is not viable if I want to maintain my usual standards (which is pretty sad when you think about it).

As a direct result, this blog - Things Eric Dislikes - will be on hiatus until the move is finished.

Believe me - I don't like it any more than you do.

Moving

Some of you may notice that this post is a bit later in the day than is usual for me.

It's because I'm moving.

My wife and I bought a house, and now we're in the process of packing up every single item we have ever owned, putting it into boxes, and then relocating those boxes an hour South to the new home.

We have a very full two-bedroom apartment.

We were going to have professional movers take care of it for us, but that fell through last-minute.

The good news is that we have until the end of July in our current place.

The bad news is that we have The Desk.  And by "The Desk," I mean a cold-war era United States Air Force desk.  The kind of desk you want to hide under in the event of a nuclear holocaust.  Because it would probably protect you.

I can't budge the desk from its current location by myself, so the odds of my being able to haul it out of its current room, down a flight of stairs, and into a waiting moving truck are ... well ... slim to none.

The good news is that we'll never have to move The Desk again. And it won't need to be moved up or down any stairs when we deliver it.

So now, instead of having professionals pack all of our stuff into boxes, we're doing it ourselves.

While working full-time.

We have a game gathering/open house on Wednesday. And we don't currently have any tables set up.

And a lot of the games are in the garage.

It's ... it's not easy.

Thankfully, we own this house.  If we play our cards right, we'll never have to move again.

Because moving sucks.

(There may not be a post next week, due to this entertainment.  Fair warning.) 

Sleep

As I write this, I have just turned off my PS3. And it was a lot more difficult than I'd expected it to be, because I have a new game:



Dungeon Twister releases for the PS3 on July 3rd. Because I'm good friends with the designer (of the board game, not of the video game), I managed to get a free copy.  Early.

On a weeknight.

Unfortunately, this means that I need to be up early tomorrow. So I have to get some sleep.

Which sucks.

We waste nearly half our lives asleep.  Have you ever really thought about that?

You know how there aren't enough hours in the day to do X? There probably would be, if we didn't spend so much time asleep.

I know that there are maintenance tasks that the body performs while we sleep. I know that sleep is closely tied to memory. I know that it's essential and important and blah blah blah blah blah.

But - and be honest here - if you could work for eight hours, spend eight hours with your significant other, and then spend eight hours playing games and hanging with friends, wouldn't you go for it? With little or no hesitation?

There are scientists out there working on pills that remove the need for sleep without all those nasty side-effects of sleep deprivation.  I keep seeing scattered reports that they're getting close.  That we're going to start winning the War with Sleep.  I wouldn't be surprised if the military isn't funding a good chunk of it.

Once they have it figured out, they can sign me up.

Seriously.

I'm tired of wasting so much time.

I want to be able to do more than just work and spend a few brief hours with Stephanie. I want to be able to stay out late at Phoenix Games or The Airlock and then come home and spend some time actually interacting with my wife instead of just snoring at her.

I want to destroy the distinction between morning people and evening people - because those won't exist anymore. We'll all just be people.  Or now people. Or we'll find new and exciting ways to divide ourselves up (my money is on this one, by the way).

But sleep and lack thereof won't be a valid excuse for anything anymore - we already don't treat it as one. Do you doubt me?  Try being late to work because you slept through your alarm. See how your boss reacts.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm busy writing when I should be sleeping.

After all, I need to be functional in the morning. And that still requires sleep.

Alcohol in Grocery Stores

Until very recently, Washington was one of those states in which you need to go to a dedicated liquor store in order to purchase hard alcohol. You could purchase beer and wine in grocery stores, but that's it.

Last November, we passed some voter-sponsored initiatives that put hard alcohol into grocery stores and closed all of the state-run liquor stores.  See, here in Washington, we can get damn near anything through, if we can get enough signatures on petitions.

My parents are teetotalers. They even use the word "Teetotaler" from time to time.

I'm not. I'm not stupid with booze - being brought up in a dry household will do that for you. But I do enjoy a drink every now and again.

But I don't think that hard alcohol should be found in liquor stores. If it weren't for the cooking uses of beer and wine, I'd be opposed to their presence in grocery stores, too.

It's not a matter of poor impulse control.  It's not because I don't trust grocery stores.

It's pricing and selection.

When the state ran the liquor stores, each manufacturer only needed to supply one customer. This meant that costs to ship to Washington State were low - if you only have to worry about delivering to one or two warehouses, you don't need a full fleet of trucks. If you only have one customer, it's a simple matter to handle invoicing and billing for the state. No big deal for the big names, but the smaller companies may have to double or triple their staff to keep up with the increased paperwork - and that means an increase in prices.

And that's before we talk about the taxes. Don't get me started on the taxes. Really.

When the state ran the liquor stores, if I wanted something that they didn't have, it was easy to special order it. The state had a list of beverage manufacturers, because they were licensed with the state.

While many grocery stores can still special order product, it's more difficult - especially if you want something more obscure. Because the grocery store has to query the state to make sure it's legal to sell (x). And they need to jump through hoops to get the SKU set up in their system so they can order it.

Take Absinthe, for example.  There are a number of legal varieties of the stuff out there.  Do you know how many I can get in my local grocery stores?

Zero. Zilch. Zip. Nada. None.

Why not?  There is a public perception that the stuff is illegal, so they're hesitant to order it in. Then, once all the hoops are jumped through, it's a low-profit item for them - if they have to order case quantities (which wouldn't surprise me), and I only want one bottle, then they are stuck with the rest of the case. And it may or may not sell. Meaning they end up paying storage on it until either I come back for another bottle (in eight months or a year or more) or they write it off.

So now I can't get Absinthe. Which is a shame, because I actually like it. Occasionally.

If we had specialty liquor stores (state-run or not), then the availability thing wouldn't be as big of an issue.

And we do have a few - but they are inevitably within a block or so of a big chain grocery store that buys alcoholic beverages by the truckload.

Can you guess who will have the better prices?

Can you guess who is likely to stick around longer?

I feel bad for all the new small business owners that paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to buy the old stock and locations of the state-run liquor stores.

And yes, I know. There are specialty Beer and Wine stores in the area. There have been for years. And I don't know how they have survived - but they are (by now) run by businessmen who know what they're doing, and who are used to a relatively stable market.  I suspect that a small handful of specialty liquor stores will survive, but the majority of them are going to close, probably within six months or a year.

Long-term, I think that the voters in this state shot themselves in the foot.

And I really don't like that.

Change

I don't carry cash.

I have a checkbook and a debit card, and have had for years.

Because I used to carry cash.  Everywhere.

When I was in Junior High and High School, my parents would give me enough money on Monday to buy my lunches for the week. And so I would - only probably not like they had planned.

I spent as little as possible, you see.  I determined fairly early on how little I needed to keep going.  So I would have a pepperoni stick and a soft pretzel with cheese. Every day.

I'm a bit of a creature of habit.

It was much less, I think, than my parents expected me to eat for lunch. But that's beside the point.

These purchases didn't add up to an even dollar amount.  If I remember correctly, it was $1.15 for my lunch.

The first day, I'd have $20.  The second day, I'd have three fives, three ones, and eighty-five cents in change.  The third day, I'd have three fives, one one, and a dollar seventy in change.

Every week, my change would add up and add up until it got in the way.  Because it was faster to grab two ones than it was to count out the change.

I'm a man.  We keep things in our pockets. Because we can. 


Side note: Apparently women can't.  Pockets in women's jeans really suck. I suspect that it's one reason they carry purses.

in high school, I kept at least one pen and one mechanical pencil in my pockets.  And a small notebook.  Generally, I also had one or more dice in my pockets, too.  It was useful, because you never knew when you would stumble into a pick-up game of ... um ... Dungeons & Dragons. Not that I ever did.

Either way, I had limited pocket space.

By the end of the week, I would be very annoyed, because I would have pockets full of change, and no room for my pen. Or some of my dice would have escaped and were now lost forever. And my pants would weigh more and more as the week went on, which also annoyed me.

So I stopped carrying cash regularly.  I understand that cash is an essential at times. I realize I should probably keep around $20 in my wallet for emergencies - but I just don't want to run the risk of filling up with change, again.

Because it's too easy to overlook until it's taken over.

Unexplained Gaps In A Regular Posting Schedule

I'm following a number of blogs. More than is probably actually healthy for me to follow, truth be told. But I've gotten used to certain patterns.

When a blog misses a scheduled post, it throws me for a bit of a loop.

Some of the blogs I follow are more important to me than others, and, if one of those misses its update, my whole day can be thrown out of whack.

I hate it.

Even worse is when the blog returns with no explanation. They were gone, and now they're back. No explanation, no apology.  Just a weird gap in their publishing calendar that may never be explained.

Calling Tech Support

Every now and again at work, I have to call tech support for one or another of the companies we deal with. And it's inevitably a long hold.  Why?  They believe that only customers will call them - people whose money they already have. So they don't believe they need to spend a huge pile of money adequately staffing their phone lines. Because, worst-case, they pay for shipping to themselves and then shipping back to you. And a bit for repairs on the one you shipped to them. All of which, again, is less expensive than an adequate customer service team.

It means I spend a lot of time on hold.

I have never called a single company anywhere at any time that has decent hold music, so I end up listening to a nearly eternal loop of bad eighties music remixes. That is "bad covers of bad music."

And that's only if I'm able to get through the phone tree to reach the hold queue. Too many phone trees have dead ends that will hang up on you.

When you eventually manage to get a human being, they are experts at not giving you any information or feedback. And at causing long conversational pauses to make you uncomfortable enough to just agree to whatever they want.

They don't usually have the power to actually help you, either. Even if your product is actually damaged or defective. For that, you need a supervisor. To get a supervisor, you get to listen to their pathetic pseudo-music again. For hours at a time.

There are vendors who, I swear, only have one customer service representative. And one supervisor. And they take turns answering calls. Instead, the company spends their money on a complicated phone tree with dozens of lines.

It's one reason I buy a lot of Toshiba products - I've never had a problem getting a human being on their phone trees, and their customer service reps seem genuinely able to help.

This endorsement, by the way, was not paid for. It's genuine.  Toshiba's tech support trees are everything I wish everyone else's was.

Because what everyone else has really has to go.

Heat As A Replacement For Flavor

When I was growing up, my dad nearly always had a bottle of Tabasco sitting on the table.  It didn't matter what we were eating, it was nearly always there.  He loved the stuff. I was terrified of it for years.

Now, I'm married to a wonderful woman who happens to be Mexican.  She loves spicy food, too.

Both of them love Thai food in particular.  But I can't go to the restaurant with them, because they usually order at the four-star (or hotter) level, and I just can't eat that.

I know that spice heat has its place. I agree that spicy food can be quite tasty.

But I think that far too many restaurants (and home cooks for that matter) make food spicy to mask the fact that the flavor isn't really there.  Or just because they can.

Heat should be one component of flavor, but it shouldn't be there as a replacement for real flavor.

Every time I eat something that's beyond my spice tolerance, I have to wonder what they're trying to hide with the heat. Is it a lack of flavor? Is there something stale? Maybe something that wasn't good enough to serve by itself, but it'll be undetectable as such if you spice it up?

And I really don't like that mystery.

Selling Agents

I should state this before I get into it: If you are seeing this via my Facebook, you are NOT part of the problem, you are not what I'm disliking here. Otherwise, I wouldn't have accepted your friend request.

I used to work in the title insurance industry.  I worked in the customer service department, and my primary job was creating flyers and postcards for real estate agents.

I'm naturally a very cynical man, but this job made me very cynical in specific directions:  Real Estate Agents in particular.

What I didn't know at that point - and didn't bother to learn - was that there really are two types of agent.  There are Seller's Agents and Buyer's Agents.  The Buyer's Agents are trying to find a home for their clients.  The Seller's Agents are trying to help their clients offload their houses.

The agents would bring me terrible photos of these absolute shitholes and expect me to make it look good - and sometimes I could. But all too often, the house just ... wasn't good. And I couldn't make it look good.

I learned all the lingo.  Even today, when I'm looking at listings, I'm seeing the same terminology that makes me cringe. "This house is convenient to Freeways, Shopping, Transit," for example, means "This house is under the overpass. There is a bus stop right in front of the house, and you can visit the Salvation Army that is less than a block away. You will never sleep due to the road noise because traffic in front of the house is non-stop."

"Step-saver Kitchen," means "You can fit yourself in there. Probably. Provided you don't want to actually move around at all."  "Newly updated," means "We slapped a fresh coat of paint on the interior." "Renovated" means "We gutted it and put walls where walls have no business being." "Remodeled" means "We took the renovation and made it MORE renovated!"

By the end of my years doing that, I could just about write ad copy in my sleep.

The worst part of the job, though, wasn't trying to write ad copy for these "houses."  It wasn't trying to make rat-infested pestholes look appealing. It was dealing with the agents who had accepted the responsibility for selling them.

You know how people view used car salesmen?  I have a dimmer view of most of the seller's agents.

Two days ago, I saw a Form 17 for the first time in close to a decade. It just reminded me of a co-worker at the Title Company who was selling her house. The realtor asked her about crime in the area, and she started to answer.  He stopped her. "If I know," he said, "I have to disclose it."  Here's the secret about the Form 17: You only need to disclose what you know about. If a seller can conceivably play dumb, they often will play dumb.

The form we saw said "Windows to be replaced," and, when we viewed the house again a few days later, some of the windows had been replaced - but not all of them. And they hadn't planned to replace all of them, either.

I know that with the economy being what it is, it's next to impossible to make a living strictly as a Buyer's Agent. The agent we're working with, for example, is awesome.  She's really neat and very enthusiastic. And she does work as a Seller's Agent, too. Mostly for folks she helped into those homes in the first place.

It's the Seller's Agent's job to play along with the seller as much as possible.

And encourage other folks to buy the home by making it look good.

I'm okay with that.  But when the seller's agent starts to suggest ways to fulfill the letter of the rules while leaving the spirit of them behind ... well ... it felt really deceptive, and by the end I really didn't want to be a part of it.

And now I'm not.

And that's probably a good thing.

Blogger Glitches

So I am currently writing (actively) three blogs and occasionally update two others.

All five blogs are run through Blogger's interface. I've gotten used to it, and it has some bells and whistles that I really like.  For example, the ability to schedule a post for the future and have it (magically) appear when that date arrives.

But apparently there is an issue with the scheduling module, because Eric Shoots Things hasn't actually released its scheduled posts for the last two weeks without my direct (and personal) intervention.

I have a hunch it's something to do with the Google+ integration, because it worked before I set that up.  But I'm not a computer programmer or engineer of any sort. I write a lot of words, and the Magic Google Box makes them appear where you can read them.

Or, rather, it's supposed to.

Being Sold To

I really hate being sold to when I'm not looking to buy anything. If I'm in a store, that's one thing. I totally understand that you suspect I'm there to spend money and want to help me spend that money - to a point.

But there are times and places where I do not want to be sold to. At home, for example. And the worst home salespeople aren't the telemarketers. They aren't the door-knockers.  They're the people who tape things to my door. It annoys me so much that I will not give money to anyone who tapes things to my door. Period. I particularly love it when I'm at home and they tape things to my door.

Even setting aside the potential damage the tape can do to the paint job of the door (or doorframe), it gives me a piece of paper that I have to deal with. And, if I'm out of town when they stick it up, it provides a convenient "NOT HOME" flag for the world to see.  Seriously: Does this sort of marketing actually work?

Similarly, I hate coming out to the car and finding something stuck under my windshield wipers.

An even more annoying place to be sold to?  The bank.

I personally bank with a credit union. They're easy to deal with, and, as a non-profit, they don't have exorbitant fees for everything. If I screw up, yes, there are fees, but there are no automatic fees on my account, the interest rates are good, and the people I deal with are really neat.

But I am responsible for my office's daily deposit. Every morning - without fail - the teller at my office's bank asks me if I have my personal account there.

I explain that I don't. That I'm happy with my credit union. And then - every morning - I get the exact same response.  "Well we offer several services which are different from your credit union's." They then proceed to list services which are, indeed, different from those offered by the credit union. Different in that they are inferior. They offer savings at a lower interest rate, loans at higher rates, and higher fees on everything.

It's really annoying.

And that annoyance is made worse by the realization that their corporate office probably requires them to ask us that. Someone in a boardroom somewhere thought it would be a good idea to annoy potential customers who have every day stated that they were happy with their current situation.

It's not that they don't recognize me, either - several of them call me by name when I reach the front of the line. They know I'm not interested. They know I'm going to turn them down. And they still ask, because not asking  could theoretically cost them their job.

I'm actually afraid of what sort of questions they'd ask if I actually banked there. Would they try to sell me a different account? Try to push additional credit cards on me?

It all adds up to an unpleasant and awkward experience that I very much dislike.

NPR Pledge Drives

I grew up listening to NPR. One of my earliest clear memories is of the Star Wars Radio Drama booming from Dad's old stereo. Which gives you some idea of my age, too, I guess.

I was five at the time.

When I was thirteen, I received a clock radio as a Christmas gift, and spent my evening looking for the local classical radio station (yes, I was an odd kid). I thought I'd found it - but what I'd actually found was KUOW, one of two local NPR affiliates.

At the time, they played classical music in the evenings (between about 7 and 10 pm).

When it hit 10 pm, I learned that this was NOT the station I'd thought it was. But I liked it, and I stuck with it.

In fact, I've been listening to KUOW for 23 years, now. And I love it. Don't get me wrong - I don't agree 100% with everything I hear on the station. But I think the dissenting opinion is valuable and important. And NPR does better than most news organizations at presenting a truly balanced perspective.

The problem is that NPR is underfunded. Every three months or so, they have to pause and ask for money - because it's our money that keeps them going.

I don't begrudge them the pledge beaks. They need the money. I just wish the breaks weren't necessary. I wish people would pledge without the nagging. I wish the government would give them more money.

But they don't, and so we suffer through the pledge breaks. Until the goal is met and the pledge breaks go away.

For another three months.

Mornings

I'm really not good with mornings.  Never have been.  I've always been more of a night owl. It's just how I'm wired.

I used to work in a laser tag arena.  We were open from 10am until midnight most days, and I tended to work the late shift. It meant I got home around 2am.

Before that, I worked at a fast food restaurant that was open ten to ten most days. When I opened, I had to be to work by nine for food prep.  After work, I often went to a local restaurant for trivia until roughly 2am. Meaning I was home around 2:30.

It was just my natural routine - one I settled into naturally.

It wasn't long before my boss stopped scheduling me for morning shifts.  "You're just so much better with customers in the evenings," she told me.

Because I was almost non-functional in the morning.  This was partly due to my sleep disorder and partly because I'm just more alert in the evenings.

I'm normally a bit of a cranky grump. Ask anyone who knows me or has worked with me or has read this blog. But having to be up in the morning pushes my grump levels to new heights (or depths, as the case may be).  I'm crabby, incoherent, and less logical than normal (which is really saying something).

It adds up to a bad combination to be around - if I had a choice, I  wouldn't be around me in the mornings.

Last-Minute Projects

As some of you know, I (in my spare time) work as part of a translation team. My specific job is localization (I don't speak enough of anything other than English to be otherwise useful to this sort of  team).

In short, I receive a file that has been translated into English, and it's my job to polish the English a bit. It's between five and eight pages, and generally doesn't need a huge amount of polish.

It's not generally hugely time-consuming, and it's work that I love doing.  Normally, I can get much of it done on my lunch break. This has allowed me to be very flexible with the revision work.

Currently, my day job is in a bit of chaos - someone is leaving and so we have a trainee.  Not only that, but the responsibilities of the person who is leaving are being split up among two other folks who need to make time to learn.

This means that the localization work needs to wait until evenings, because I need to get away from the office at lunch time, because it's very stressful.

On Monday, the translator with whom I work contacted me to let me know he had a rush job coming through. And it would be a big one. And it was due Wednesday morning. He was clearly frustrated at the time.

When I got up Tuesday, it was in my inbox. All thirty pages of it.

Tuesday night, I virtually ignored my houseguest to work on this project. And I was dissatisfied with the "finished" product, so I told the translator, who asked if we could work it on Wednesday evening.

We could - and did.  But it meant that I wasn't home until well after midnight.

The end result was a polished product (which is good) and an exhausted Eric (which is not good).

And, before you ask, I'd do it again if I had to. I like the people and the perks too much to give it up.

Short Posts From People Whose Writing I Enjoy

Yep. Not fun.

Falling Behind

When I first started this blog, I immediately had six months' worth of things I dislike ready to go. Because I dislike a lot of things (as you may have noticed).

As time went by, I have been mostly able to keep up. It's not hard to find more things I dislike.

But it's hard for me to find the time to write them up, and sometimes my mind goes blank when I sit down behind my keyboard, which leads to my panicking on Thursday evenings, trying to get something down before the post goes live on Friday.

I don't like that. At all.

While I can occasionally spit out a decent post in ten minutes, it feels ... wrong.

I like taking the time to craft these posts. Or playing games like scheduling a post about Late Posts for noon instead of 5:05 am. Or running a post about reruns for two weeks running.

Honestly, this blog is a lot of fun for me to write. Unless I put it off to the last minute. And then it's a chore.

So I guess it's really not falling behind that I dislike so much as not being ahead.

Either way, I'm not a fan.

Cash Discounts

My wife and I were a bit South of home the other day and we needed gas for the Beast. This is not unusual - the Beast may get very good mileage for an SUV, but it's still not fantastic mileage (22 MPG, for those of you who were wondering).  We only put Chevron in our car. It's a matter of "I have grown to trust Chevron's quality over the years, and have no desire to gamble with another brand at this point." Shell may be excellent gas. Arco could be phenomenal. But we use Chevron in our car.

The only Chevron station in town only had one price listed on their sign - $3.969 per gallon. Since it's $4.069 at home, we figured that would be a great deal, so we decided to fill up completely.

I swiped our card at the pump, pulled the nozzle off the pump and put it into the car, hit the start button and was about to start pumping when I saw that the pump was displaying a price of $4.069. So I looked at the sign out front, and saw - in small letters, "Cash/Chevron Card Price." 

That's right. Since I was using my Debit Card, I had to pay more. If I hadn't been paying attention, I would have been pretty angry. As it is, I still wasn't happy - that was borderline bait-and-switch.

Now I realize that accepting credit or debit cards costs the merchant money - generally it's a few percentage points off of every transaction, with a minimum cost per transaction. That minimum cost means that merchants sometimes lose money on transactions under about $10.

I understand and accept that.

What most merchants do is spread that cost out so everyone ends up paying a few pennies more per item - cash users give most merchants a bit more profit per transaction than credit/debit card users. I would wager that credit/debit card users spend more money overall, however (depending on the business, of course), which balances things out quite a bit.

To accept Visa or MasterCard or American Express or Discover or - really - any credit card, a merchant has to sign a merchant agreement with that credit card provider. One of the terms of that agreement is that the merchant cannot charge credit card customers more just because they are using credit cards.

To get around this, merchants occasionally offer cash discounts - that is, rather than charging card users more, they charge cash customers less. And by "merchants," I mean, "gas stations." Because no-one else seems to do this.

I don't carry cash. In fact, I have not regularly carried cash on my person since the late nineties. The rise of the Visa Debit Card meant that I could buy nearly anywhere without needing to worry about being robbed. On those rare occasions where cash was needed, I could easily hit a nearby ATM (those things are everywhere).

Not carrying cash, for me, makes me less likely to be robbed (and, if I am robbed, I'm not liable for purchases made with my card). Not carrying cash means I don't have to touch the stuff (it's really filthy stuff). It means that losing my wallet (something I used to do with alarming regularity) isn't as panic-inducing as it used to be.

I'd read about cash discounts years ago. They were generally considered a historical artifact.

Until now.

And I hate them.

How Robert J. Sawyer Ends His Stories

My wife is a huge fan of Robert J. Sawyer's writings. With good reason - he's an excellent author.

She has read nearly everything he has ever written. She's read at least one series more than four times.

Sawyer has very interesting ideas. His characterization is good. His setups are fascinating, and I like the flow of the stories he tells.

But he can't end his books to save his life.

How bad is it? Analog recently serialized one of his stories. I didn't tell my wife. Because I knew the ending would be thoroughly unsatisfying. And I was right.

One book started its epilogue (following an ending without any sort of resolution) by jumping forward 300 years. And moving the story from Earth to Mars.  You read that correctly - he couldn't figure out how to end the story within the frame of the story itself, so he had to jump time and space so that the book would have a decent ending, even if the story didn't.

My wife threw the book across the room.

She confronted him at NorWesCon.

I still can't mention the book to her, or she throws her hands in the air and gets a bit shrill.

This, by the way, is not mockery.  We all have our hot buttons and triggers.

My wife's just happens to be Sawyer's habit of not ending his books. And I have a hunch I'd have done the same in that situation.

I can't say as I blame her.

Customers Who Think That 5:00 PM Is A Good Arrival Time

My job is a full-time day job.  I work from eight until five, Monday through Friday, with an hour of lunch. We also have a policy against overtime - if you work it, they'll pay it, but it's better if you try to avoid having any in the first place.

I bitch about it a lot, but I really do like my job, because of the people. Most of the time.

When I leave at five, the office is closed.  The computers are shut down for the day, and we are done.

The warehouse guys usually start shutting the computers down a minute or two before five. On the order desk, we tell the computer to shut down at five, and then leave - we figure the computer can reboot or shut down without our babysitting it. And it prevents overtime.

Last Friday, a customer pulled into the parking lot at 4:58, and was in the will call office two minutes later.  The warehouse guys had already clocked out, but one of them clocked back in to help us take care of the customer.

Even better, he was a customer who is ... less-than-reliable at paying his bills and has an extremely thick accent, to boot. His accent is thick enough that I'm the only one in the office who can understand him most of the time. And he's behind enough that our system puts his orders on credit hold - we need someone in our Portland office to release them so that they can be pulled off the shelves by the warehouse team.

He'd placed an order earlier that day, but he places lots of orders, and only picks up a few of them. So we hadn't expected to see him.

When he pulled in at 5:00, I had to call the credit department to ask someone to wait.  One of the warehouse team volunteered to stay a bit late to help. And I got to do the talking.  And, finally, one of the keyholders had to stay here.

It took ten minutes to get the order released from hold (after he paid).  While we were waiting for the credit department, I got to sit through a long tirade about how he's been a good customer for twenty years and why are we treating him like this? It was hard to bite back the obvious response of, "because the money you're paying now is going to invoices from two and a half years ago ... "

Then I went out to help the warehouse guy pull stuff off the shelves.  It wasn't little stuff, either - it was almost a full pallet.  While we were pulling it, the customer backed up to one of our bay doors.

The product he'd ordered came in largeish boxes - roughly two feet tall, three feet wide, and two feet deep. This meant that the pallet-load of product wasn't going to fit into his minivan.

While we were pulling the product, I heard him on the phone to another distributor - apparently we were his first stop that night. And those other guys?  They close at 5:00, too.

Once his van was as full as we could make it, he told us, "I'll be back on Monday for the rest," and then he took off. At 5:30.

This means that my company paid a half hour of overtime for at least three people, not including the credit department people who hung out to assist. And all of us took a morale hit, because it was Friday at closing time.  Who wants to give up weekend?

Was the sale worth it? Financially?  Yes. Probably. But it cost morale. And it trained this customer that his behavior was acceptable, so he'll probably do it again.

And I really don't like that.

Breaking In A New Co-Worker

It's tough when you need to train someone new.

Mind you, it's better than being short-handed, but it still sucks. To start with, as the trainer, you are personally responsible for every mistake they make. Or, at least, that's how I feel.

Maybe it's why I do so much of the training.

I don't talk much about my job here. I complain about aspects of it from time to time, but I don't actually talk much about What I Do.  It's because my job is honestly pretty boring. I work on the order desk for a warehouse. It's part data entry, part receptionist, part customer service, part tech support, and it often feels like I'm someone's executive assistant all at the same time.

I'm responsible for every freight quote out of our warehouse. There are two other people on the desk, and one of them gave notice today.  Six weeks of notice, but notice nonetheless.

This means that we're now hunting for a new person.

Someone I'm going to train.

The job itself isn't all that difficult - but there are a lot of details, and you can very easily get tripped up on one of them. A large part of the training is teaching what to do when you screw up, because our corporate culture is unique.

My first week there (more than four years ago), I was shocked when one of the sales reps told me (in front of his customer no less), "I screwed up. It was my fault."  He didn't try to shift the blame onto me (as the new person) or anyone else on the desk. He had screwed up and accepted responsibility for it. And that's been (mostly) the pattern at the office. I don't know about our other location - I can only speak for the Seattle office on that one. But it takes some getting used to.

The first hurdle in training? It's not the job. We have zero privacy. We're not in cubicles - we're all on the same desk. There is no sound separation between us. Hurdle number two? I have been known to swear like a sailor. J, the co-worker who is leaving, also swears like a sailor.

Once we pass those hurdles, then we start with the basics. Order entry first, followed by the phones, and so on.

Training sucks. Its repetitive and includes a lot of "This is the mistake you made and here is how to avoid it in the future." And if I miss a step, then a mistake will be made down the road that will be my fault for not covering it in training.  There are enough details to stress over that several people have been here more than a year before a gap in their training was discovered.

And that's just the breaking-in for the desk. The new person will have to mesh with the warehouse and the sales reps and our management and the customers and ...

Getting used to the environment and the people is actually harder than the job itself. And it's rough on all of us for the first few weeks.

I'm not looking forward to it.

Rental Cars

My wife and I were rear-ended a few weeks ago. No damage to us, but the car suffered a few scrapes and scratches.  We weren't at fault, so the car is in for repairs. And we have temporarily acquired a rental car.

Our car is a Saturn Vue. A 2007, with the V6 engine.  This is a small SUV with a surprising amount of power. We don't have the all wheel drive version, just the front wheel.

The rental is a Dodge Caliber. It's not a bad car. It's just not ours.

"We only have two rules for the car," they told me before I signed the paperwork, "No smoking and no pets." Neither is a problem for me - my wife is allergic to smoke and the cats don't like riding in the car. And we don't like having the cats in the car, either.

So at least the interior doesn't smell like smoke or dogs.

The steering wheel and the pedals are the wrong distance apart - when I can reach the pedals comfortably, I feel like I'm hugging the steering wheel. When the steering wheel is comfortable, the pedals are a stretch. And the steering wheel blocks too much of the instrument cluster - I wound up having to decide what I was okay with not seeing.  The car is just not designed for someone with my proportions - the armrests are too low. I like to rest my elbow on the armrests while I drive, and I can't do that in this car. And I hit my head on the door frame every time I get into the car.

The ceiling is too low; I feel like I'm driving a cave. The fact that the windows are too small doesn't help. And they're small all the way around; the blind spots in this thing are terrible. I normally hate changing lanes - and that's in a car with decent vision out the sides and rear of the car. I can't see where I'm going to be heading in this thing.

There is static on the radio - it has built-in Sirius, but the rental agency doesn't pay for it, so I can't listen to it. So I'm stuck with the static.

The acceleration profile is too different from our car, too. When I push the pedal, I expect it to go. This one? Doesn't. I suspect it has a standard four-cylinder engine - and I'd wager this car weighs about the same as my Saturn.

The suspension is awful, too.  I can feel every bump on the road - and taking a speed bump? Not fun. At all. I don't know if the suspension is shot because it's a rental car, or if some smartass thought a sports suspension would be the way to go for this car, but it makes for an uncomfortable drive.

And it's interesting - "Nimble" is not a word I usually think of to describe an SUV, but, compared to my Vue, the handling in this car is downright sluggish. Combining this with the poor blind spots mentioned above, and lane changes really suck. I'm just glad my commute doesn't generally involve much swerving or dodging.

And I miss my heated seats.

I'm only supposed to be in this thing for a few days before I get my car back. I just hope I can manage without going insane in the meantime.

Static

While in a rental car a few weekends ago, I had the opportunity to become re-acquainted with something that future generations will not have to endure.  Static on the radio.

I've become spoiled in my usual car - we have both HD radio and Satellite radio. Neither of these suffers from static.  It's like Digital TV - you either have signal or you don't.  HD Radio is slow in catching on. One more reason I'm glad I live where I do.  Here in the Seattle area, I have a number of stations available in HD, including both local NPR affiliates (which I listen to a lot).

As I mentioned a few weeks back, I dislike my long commute. It gives me plenty of time to listen to the radio, however. And I do listen, because otherwise I'd go nuts.

When I was a kid, I used to have a clock radio. It was a really bad one, with really crappy radio reception. Everything I listened to was static-filled. And I hated it.

Instead, I listened to a lot of tapes - but I got tired of only having the same limited selection of music available to me, so I would listen to the radio for a few days, gritting my teeth against the static. Usually, I'd hear a new band or group or song, and would buy that tape a few days later.

Compact Discs were the same way, only better because they didn't wear out over time. They were digital.  At the time, the difference between "digital" and "magic" was only that one was real and the other wasn't.

Then I discovered streaming music online.  I remember thinking If only I could listen to digital music in my car!

And now I can. And do. Constantly.

The stereo which is in my car is now in its second car. In fact, my wife and I both found ourselves getting angry at the factory stereo before we upgraded. To the point where I was borderline road-raging nearly every time I sat behind the wheel.

It's not a good place to be, so it was only a few weeks before we upgraded the factory stereo to the HD-radio we had pulled out of the previous car. Because we just couldn't take the static anymore.

I look forward to the day it is abolished completely.

Being Snowed In

As I type this, I'm about to be trapped in my apartment for a second day. Because of snow.

I know I've mentioned before that I don't like how Seattle is mocked for its reaction to snow, but I have never missed two days of work in a month due to weather.

My general practice is to miss the first day of snow. That gives the idiots who don't actually know how to drive in this crap a day to wind up in the ditch and allows the city a full day to sand and/or salt the roads, making them safer to drive.  Not only that, but my driveway on Monday was a block of ice with snow on top of it.  By Tuesday, I was able to make it in.

But there is another storm blowing in. It's already bad tonight - it took us far too long to get home. Which is funny, because the first two thirds of our commute was dry.

As it stands, I will probably miss work tomorrow. And I'll be trapped in the apartment, because my driveway will be a block of ice with snow on top.

When I'm home like this, I go stir-crazy. I love spending time at home. In fact, I don't go stir-crazy unless I can't leave the house for some reason.

I spent Monday on my PS3, playing Skyrim. I expect to spend tomorrow doing dishes and blogging to keep my mind off the "trapped" feeling. Maybe I'll take some photos of my games for that GeekList I've been pondering ...

My wife is able to work from home, and I won't get in the way of that. It's almost worse than being home alone.

Ah, well.  Nothing I can do about it but suffer through it.

Right?

Dieting

It's not exactly a New Year's Resolution, but I need to lose a few pounds.

By "a few pounds," I mean "a fifth-grader."

Right now, I'm sitting around 300 lbs.

So we broke out the Kinect and the Wii Fit.

And I've changed my food habits.  I'm down to 1-2 sodas per week. I've started eating green leafy things.

And I hate it.

I'd heard that low-calorie versions of foods were inferior to the normal full-calorie fat-filled foods, but I'd never experienced it personally before.  It'd all been anecdotal to me. And now it's true.

A friend of mine who is a professional chef informed me years ago that "fat is flavor."  And he wasn't kidding.

Instead of eating low-calorie foods, I'm eating smaller portions.  It's been more than a decade since I had leftovers from a restaurant on a regular basis - and now it's the norm.

It's a weird feeling, not being able to finish two tacos and some fries last week.

The Wii Fit and Kinect Adventures are also killing me.  I wake up in the mornings, and my legs ache. because they haven't had to move me quickly left and then right and then left and then right and duck and jump and duck and jump and ...  Yeah.  It's like that.

I know that long-term, I'm going to be a lot better-off, but I really don't like these early stages.

At all.

Alarm Clocks

I have to be out of my apartment every morning by around 6:30 am in order to make it in to work on time.  If you hadn't figured it out by now, let me spell this out for you: I am not a morning person.

I never have been, and I probably never will be.

The very first thing I experience every morning is a repetitive buzzing. Over and over and over.

I hate it.

I fully understand that, were it not for this clock, I would not make it in to work, and I would become unemployed.  But that doesn't mean I have to like it.

It's interesting to me - alarm clocks are such a core component of nearly everyone's daily life. And yet ...

Is there anyone who likes these things? No. Really.

Historically, alarm clocks would ring a bell. Loudly and repeatedly.

In the eighties, it was clock radios, which would turn the radio on so we could listen to the perky morning show hosts. These never worked for me, forcing me to the other alternative of the time - loud obnoxious buzzing things.  Of course the eighties also gave us the snooze button. They may have existed before this time, but they became more widespread in the eighties.

Do you know what that snooze button does?  It postpones the inevitable and makes you late more often than not. And most snooze buttons are set for nine minutes of rest - who dreamed that number up? Is it a matter of snoozing for less than ten minutes?

These days, it seems as though most "alarm clocks" are phones. We use my wife's phone. And, while she usually finishes the wake-up process, her phone starts the ball rolling. Loudly and obnoxiously. And with an weird fifteen minute snooze.

And we both hate waking up to it.

Headaches

As I write this, I'm suffering from a headache. And the odds are pretty good that so is my wife.

I get small headaches all the time. They're a regular if annoying part of my life.  They're not debilitating most of the time, and I can just pop some aspirin or ibuprofin and work through it.

My wife's headaches are debilitating.  Enough so that she at one point had FMLA paperwork on file because she was missing work for it. After multiple CAT scans and a variety of other scans, x-rays, and so on, her doctors were baffled as to their cause. And they haven't been able to figure out how to cure her, even after nearly a decade of pain. What they did was give her some painkillers that also impair her ability to function.

She lives her life through a constant haze of headache. Or else in a drugged haze.

It's clear how this has impacted her quality of life.

I get migraines. Occasionally. But it's got nothing on what she goes through every single day.

And I don't like anything that stresses my wife out or causes her pain.