Zel-kun’s Words

Work has been coming in slowly these last few days.  Even my co-workers have been exlaming, “Damn, there’s nothing to do!”  As a team who’s sole purpose is to fix things that break, its a good sign for the company, but  bad sign for those who depend on the work ot be there.

Luckily, I have a year-long contract, but still.

I have commissioned a custom banner to be made for the site, with any luck, it’ll be complete in a week or so.  That ugly bridge windmill.. thing at the top is going away, as soon as I can figure out how to do it.

I’ve been playing WoW with far more consistancy than I remember doing in quite some time.  In this past week, I’ve gotten my Paladin from 51 to 56, and I’m still not tired of the game.  This is doubtlessly due to the fact that I always have someone to play with, added that my guild now has a voice server.  Being able to shout, “Look out, they’re coming right for us!” rather than typing it is definitely a lot more fun.

And last night I found an axe by the name of ‘Kang the Decapitator.’

For those who aren’t familiar with the game, all treasure is grouped into six categories, each more rare than the last: Poor, Common, Uncommon, Rare, Epic, Legendary.  Each has its own colored font, grey, white, green, blue, purple, and orange respectively.  The drop rate on a random Epic is roughly 0.00001%.  Most players are lucky to see one after hundreds of hours of playing.  Last night, I found my third.  I have some crazy sort of luck in that game.

Well, I guess its Halloween today.  I remember that I would get all the candy I could as a kid, and stuff it in my desk drawer (yes, even as a kid, I had a desk), and that would be my stash for months.  Then I grew up, started being a slave wage, and found out that I could by a whole box of candy bars for about ten bucks, wihtout all the costuming and walking.

Halloween is doubtlessly our craziest tradition.  We dress up in costumes, grab giant bags, and essentially roam the neighborhoods begging for candy.  Crazier than that, people prepare for this, they buy massive amounts of candy to give away to these costumed strangers, and they do it happily (most do, anyway, others sit in the dark hoping the kids will go away).  To those that participate, Halloween represents the purest form of giving and generosity that in this humble man’s opinion, far outshines that of Christmas.

Truly ironic that there’s Christian groups against this holiday.  I know that the holiday is rooted in superstition, and that there’s even some Wiccan basis to it, but hell, so what?  How many of those kids care?  How many of the adults dumping candy into bags care?  My guess would be not a whole damn lot.

Well, that’s it for now.

Zel-kun out.

When you work at a Wal-Mart, especially a Wal-Mart in such a… unique location as Merrillville (or Hobart, depending on who you talk to), the customers are a very special sort.  You can view them much as a nature show host might view a pack of hominid apes from behind the bushes.  They are indeed strikingly human, but share a completely different set of rules than us humans.  What follows are some of my observations of these strange creatures, and the strange way their tribal codes and laws work.

Observation One:

I stood by the video game case, as I had a tendency to do, telling the customers about the various games.  I usually speak to the parents, as the younger children want nothing to do with the strange blue-vested man towering over them.  The most common question I get is, “What kind of game would be good for my son/daughter?”

This question is fair enough, I can respect this question.  Honestly, that’s more concern about their children’s hobbies than my parents have shown.  So I answer this question the way I often did, by recommending RPG’s.  Why do I recommend such games, you ask?  One reason, obviously, is that I myself enjoy them.  The other, I tell to the customer.

 ”This game here (likely something like Legend of Legaia or Tales of Destiny, some of the more wholesome games with an E rating) is nice because it focuses on plot and character development, rather than mindless killing.  The violence level is very low, and most of the themes are pretty wholesome.  Also, one nice thing is there’s lots of dialogue that your son will read throughout the game, developing his vocabulary and reading skills.  (which isn’t a lie, I would say I have RPG’s to thank for getting me into literature)”

“So, what’s this game about?” The customer asks, tilting her head in an intrigued manner, not entirely unlike my dog watching the radio.

“Well, you’re a young boy from this village who goes out on a journey, meeting new friends along the way.  You develop your skills and cast magic and gain new powers, its a lot of fun.”

“Magic… naw, my son ain’t havin’ nothin’ like that.  He been talkin’ about that Grand Thef (no T, its too much effort to pronounce the T on the end) Auto, go ahead and gimme that.”

Yep, magic is evil.  Killing cops, banging prostitutes, and running drugs is perfectly fine for children.

Observation Two:

In human society, it is considered polite to clean up after yourself or inform someone of a mess you have made.  Customers, on the other hand, have a different approach.  I spot a woman leading her daughter along, the daughter almost screaming, “I don’t feel good, I feel sick!  I want to go home!”  The mother obviously doesn’t care, as shopping is more important.

The two turn the corner and leave my sight, and I go about my business trying to explain to a customer that I don’t have software for a computer as old as his.  (he had Windows ‘95)  Which of course, makes him start yelling, the foul stench of old onions wafting over me, “I dun’ know where you wuz raised, but you dun’ tell a customer they have a computer tha’s too old!”

He threatened to go to my manager, which honestly didn’t scare me.  But I patronized him all the same, it was my job, after all.  After several minutes, I sent him on his way with a copy of some game, which I assured him won’t work, but he bought anyway.  I was sure I’d see him at the returns desk soon.

I go to the back aisle of the department, making my patrol of the department, and nearly slip and fall on the largest puddle of vomit I’ve seen in awhile, with a few cart tracks running through it.  Obviously if you see vomit you should walk right through it.

So I call maintenence and wait.  I am then told by management that there is no maintenence crew and I need to clean up the vomit myself.  I shake my head and decline their offer.

“But there’s no maintenence tonight,” the manager reaffrims.

“Well, I won’t clean up vomit.  You pay maintenence more than you pay me because they do things like that.”  I replied, and of course, I was right.  There’s a reason managers there didn’t like me, I always refused to be stepped on.  It was only a matter of minutes before the manager suckered some cashier to cleaning it up.  I always wondered what would happen if everyone refused, that maybe, just MAYBE, I’d see a manager on his hands and knees wiping up vomit.

Observation Three:

In human society, it is considered taboo to evacuate one’s bladder or bowels in public.  We have gone so far as to build special rooms in every single building where such an act can be done privately.  I notice that such is not the case among the wild customers.  Unfortunately, (or rather, very fortunately) I was not there to witness this particular curiosity.  But a co-worker of mine at the time gives this account (which I am re-creating from memory):

“I was standing there in the pet aisle, talking to an older woman, perhaps around forty.  I was showing her various filters and such that could be used to extend the life of her fish.  While we are talking, I make the mistake of turning my back to her.  A few moments later, I turn back and see her squatting over a fishbowl taken off the shelf, her dress hiked up, urinating into the bowl.  She then takes the filled bowl and dumps it into the nearby sink we use to fill the aquariums, rinses it out, and places it on the shelf, then continues to talk to me like nothing out of the ordinary happened.”

Yes… strange creatures indeed.  I am glad to hang up my binoculars and pith helmet and cease my studies of them.

Zel-kun out.

I’m trying out new site designs.  I might go back to the old design, not too sure yet.  Be sure to let me know what you think either in the comments or in the forums!  The one I have at the time of this writing is like a newspaper print theme.  I haven’t decided if I like it yet or not.

Zel-kun out.

2:58 am… that is the time I sit up and look at my clock.  I need to be awake by 3:30am, and I wake up early.  I decide to de-activate the alarm and get up anyway.  After all, if I go back to sleep and am then woken up by the alarm, I then enter that strange realm where I’m not quite asleep but not quite awake, where I’m so groggy that my brain isn’t even recording its own thoughts.  Its that realm where you suddenly realize you’re at work, and have no clear idea of how you got there.

 So I get ready and drive into work, the highways clear of their usual congestion, driving so early that its even before the morning show on the radio.  I arrive at my work, the dark building looming before me.  All the windows are dark, and the lobby is empty, save for the distant music that fills all lobbies.  I’m not sure why, that music, when you can hear it, is more creepy than the silence would be.  And when I take the elevator to the eleventh floor (which is nearly pitch black), the spookiness is only heightened.

Now, I’m not scared, on the contrary, I thrive on such environments.  Some of my fondest memories have been of such places, namely the back hallways of the mall where I used to work, cold grey stone that extended as far as you could see, very faintly in the distance you could hear the clamoring people outside.  Our storage area was in an abandoned department store that has been barricaded over in the center of the mall, dark and dilapidated.  I take these environments, the essense, the sense of foreboding, and I envision stories, tales of heroes making their way through some sinister lair, evil skulking just out of sight.

In my honest opinion, the true art of storytelling is taking that which is familiar, that which is ordinary, and telling it in an extraordinary fashion.  The greatest example of this is Stephen King.  No matter how bizarre and fantastic the story got, you could read those lines and say to yourself, “I know that place, I’ve been there.  I can smell it, hear it, practically taste it.”

I’d like to think he’s done the same thing.  He walks down the same road every one else does, but he SEES the story that everyone else misses.  And when he tells that story, everyone who’s ever been on that road listens, and knows.

Well… that was a bit of a tangent.

Anyway, I’m tired, and I still have six hours of work left, so I’m going to go now.

Zel-kun out.

Once again, my car fails me.  My brakes have been squeaking for some time now, but about last weak, the squeaking has been even louder.  Now, before I’m asked, “why didn’t you get that looked at sooner?” I will answer that I did.  I was told, by a professional brake mechanic, that the noise was caused by a gasket on a part I had recently put in the car and that the gasket should stop making noise as it ages and becoms more flexible.  Well, apparently he was very wrong in his diagnosis.

So, with squeaking so loud I can barely hear my radio, I pull into a different brake shop and have them look at it.  And it seems that a broken rod in the master cylinder punctured the brake booster.  In english, nearly my entire brake system is boned, and it was only a matter of time before my car would stop… stopping.

Price to fix this: $800

Now, for those of you who don’t know, I’m not one who’s so rich I can throw $800 at a problem and not think twice about it.  Oh no.  I am a man who hears $800 and lets forth with a string of obscenities.  So I don’t have the work done and bring my car home.  I was lucky enough that my stepfather was willing to help me, so we went out into the garage and fixed it ourselves.  We spent the entirety of Sunday out there in the cold, cursing at hard to rach bolts and stubborn parts, but finally, at 7:30pm, we emerge victorious.  And so far, the car seems to be running.

Highlights:

My stepfather dropping his lighter into the engine, which we begin probing and prodding to find the lighter.  In the middle of a long string of obscenities he exclaims, “This wouldn’t be so bad if I had lit my cigarette before it fell.”

A spring clip pops off the brake light circuit and hurls itself into oblivion.  We spend an hour searching for it before deciding to buy it from the auto parts store, who doesn’t even carry it.  We end up having to get this tiny clip from GM.

We find that the price of a master cylinder is $40.00.  The little plastic resevoir on top is $85.00.  Needless to say, we salvaged the resevoir from the broken cylinder, spending half an hour prying the damn thing off.  At the very least, it seems to be solid plastic.

Damn well better be for $85.00.

So, all in all, the job cost me $45.00 in parts, including the cylinder and a bottle of brake fluid.  The booster was a free exchange, being as I just recently bought a new one.

Hooray for doing it yourself!

Zel-kun out.

It began as I was driving in to work today, the white flakes beginning to swirl through the bumper to bumper traffic.  No doubt dropping the IQ’s of the surrounding drivers with every flake.  By the time I was at my desk, the snow was so thick that the view out my window was completely white.

Luckily, its a bit too warm (in the low 40’s) for the snow to accumulate.  I happen to love snow, before it hits the ground.  Afterwards, there’s only slippery roads and sidewalks to shovel.  And I make no secret of this, I hate shovelling the damn stuff.  But some of my earliest memories are of playing in snow-filled streets and walking through wintry tundras.  Granted, it was just a large field (through which was a shortcut from my home to school), but take snow and wind and low visability, and it seems like there’s nothing but snow for miles.

And, of course, nothing beats the view of snow falling in downtown Chicago, a place I frequent more in the winter, I would say its one of the reasons I wouldn’t want to move from this area.  The snow is great… now if we could just do something about the bitter cold.  If the temperature never went below 30, that’d be just fine.  Let’s get our experts on that one right now.

Zel-kun out.

Only been here three weeks, and already they’re moving me around.  On the plus side, its from a stifling cube piled high with discarded equipment to a more open desk with plenty of workroom for the stations I have set up.  They’re rearranging the whole IT department, one of the eccentricities of the business world, I have discovered in the past couple of years.

Get this, you take a group of people in a room, you look at them, then you decide to shuffle them like a deck of cards.  Exactly like that.  Its not like you’re rearranging to get more people to fit.  You just move people around.  I have seen this (and performed these moves for companies in the past, for that matter), dozens of times, and it never ceases to mystify me.  Sometimes its something that has a reason, such as moving to a bigger office or cube, but most of the time its people moving to an identical desk.

Ahh, the bureaucracy of the business world!

Zel-kun out.

Computers do not like this user I’m trying to set up.  In fact, its like a whole damn computer conspiracy.  This user (we’ll call him Bob for the sake of anonymity) had what we techs call ‘The Blue Screen of Death.’  This particular BSOD informed me that I had a busted hard drive.  So, I do what anyone would to, I replace the hard drive and rebuild the machine.

So, everything installs fine, I run my tests, and they all pass.  So, I give Bob back his laptop.  The next day he returns to me with ANOTHER BSOD, and the same error at that.  I run a hard drive check, and sure enough, it, too, crashed and burned.  So I do my best to calm Bob, who is understandibly upset, and who now has a source to direct his anger at.  Namely, me.

So I take his laptop back and replace the hard drive (again), and things again run smoothly.  I run my tests, install the programs, and just as I’m shutting it down, I get a BSOD.  This time a different error, but concensus around the room is its still the hard drive’s fault.  So I replace the drive (yet again) and build the machine (yes… again), and after building, I run into loads of errors in post production… the network card is acting funky.  So I take the hard drive out and put it in a different laptop… and so far so good…

This technician has his fingers crossed…

Update:

*desperate cry*

Noooooooooooooooo