Wednesday, February 28, 2007

 

More Snow, and Making Movies

Listen Up!

That week went really fast. I have no idea what happened, because nothing really out of the ordinary happened, at least not worth blogging about, and yet it went by fast enough for me to almost miss my Tuesday post. I have no announcements, I've got the same to-to and coming-soon lists as the past 3 weeks. Only difference is, one of those big projects, is practically done. Yes, my formerly nameless Juggling Video 7, now being named C.J.W.S. (Can't Juggle Worth Sh**), is done, and I mean done. I've finished gathering footage, and finished editing. Now all I have to do is save it (the hard part for my comp) and it will be released.

Daily Life:
No real spectacular story this week, at least none as epic as the usual Shoprite Stories. I hate it though when they start cutting hours at Sr when we get new recruits in, it's great for getting a free day off, but then again, you don't get as much of a paycheck. Example, last week's schedule. My normal schedule (if you haven't memorized it by now) is 4:00 pm - 10:00 pm Fri-Sun. Last week I worked from 5-9:30 on Friday, had Saturday off, and then worked from 4:15-8:45 on Sunday. The thing is, I don't really check my schedule each week, because it's so routine, so I came in on Sunday (the schedules go from Sunday to Saturday, and the new ones are posted on Fridays), expecting to work from 4:00 to 10:00, as my usual hours, especially after having Saturday off. I go to punch in, it rejects my punch (the clock won't let you punch in or out unless it's within 7 minutes of the scheduled time). So I check the schedule, and just look at my in time, 4:15. So I grab a Mountain Dew (I really need to be sponsored by them for something), chill for a while, then get to work.

After a pretty maddening Sunday, which is normal, it starts to calm down around 5:30, 6:00. So the managers get me to doing some returns. I do them, and when I come back, tell me to just go on my break and get it out of the way. No complaints here, I go on my break, come back, and do more returns until about 9:00, all the while thinking I'm leaving at 10:00. I go over to bring up the CD cart as I always do around 9:00, and the manager asks me "What are you still doing here? You were supposed to leave at 8:15!" "Huh?" "Yeah, you were scheduled to 8:15!" "Let me see that schedule." Sure enough, it says I was only scheduled until 8:15. Hey, I won't complain after doing an extra 45 minutes worth of Sunday pay, I punch with the override card, and go home feeling like a bit of an idiot, but I'm mostly just laughing. And that'll do it for this weeks lame story.

Juggle This:
Well, like I said before, my next video which finally has a name that doesn't involve the number 7,C.J.W.S (Can't Juggle Worth Sh**), is basically done and will be uploaded as soon as Windows Movie Maker stops being a bitch and lets me save the damn thing. My comp has been compromised for the past 8 months, and I've basically given up on fixing it in any way other than to reinstall windows and lose all of my customizations and stuff. But that has nothing to do with juggling, so I'll get back on topic. I haven't hit anything big recently with my juggling, HOWEVER. I have managed to get two gigs recently. One at my old elementary school coming up in 2 weeks, and another gig at a summer camp in August (literally about 3 days before I would head out for WJF4). So I feel good about that, and hopefully I won't screw up the routine I put together for next week.

A Day In The Life Of A Peanut Butter Cup ~ Reeses2150

Tuesday, February 20, 2007

 

The Smoothly Departed Shoprite President

God, where to begin with this post. I said last week that nothing was happening worth blogging about, and thanks to an offshoot of the Neutrality Theory, which I like to call the "Jinx Theory", I have at least 2 big stories to cover, plus a DVD review. I guess I'll stop making this longer and get to the sections, as you're getting tired of reading already, and I haven't even started.

Listen Up!
My 7th Juggling video is coming along nicely, I've already gotten a good20 minutes worth of footage, and I think about a minutes worth of final-cut worthy stuff. What I have to do next is find a day, where I can go someplace that won't kick me out and get as much footage as I possibly can, then I can start editing. The WMP project is progressing, slowly. Actually, I haven't touched it since the last post, simply because of how busy I am with everything else. And Finally, the MX overhaul is one of those 3 big projects that's about halfway done actually. It's all just fine-tuning and implementation from here.

Daily Life 1:
Shoprite. Saturday. Wow.
4:00, punch, go to the registers and get sent out to one of the "not special" ones. After a while of that, they send me to the food court for his lunch break. I spend a half-hour there in bliss, using the awesome knee-operated sink to keep my dry hands from cracking (which has been a big problem for me recently at Shoprite, the air is too dry), and then I head back and they send me on lunch. I'm in the juggling mood today, so I head over to the dollar store (where all the good juggling supplies are) and juggle until my break is over. I come back and they put me on returns.
About an hour later, Shoprite has the equivalent of a fire drill. The alarm starts going off, and all the customers look around confused. It goes away after about 30 seconds of mistimed beeps. Then Mr. A******, store manager #3, gets on the intercom and orders an evacuation of the building. I have no complaints, it's not that cold, and I don't mind getting paid to stand outside and do nothing but entertain customers with my broom balancing and flipping antics. As you can tell, I had a good time, meanwhile, the guys over 21 had the best idea in history, to go to the liquor store next door and get some beers. Even the receiving manager got in on it. I wish I was 21 sometimes. The best part is, 10 minutes after everyone's supposed to be outside, and some of the registers we can see through the window, STILL HAVE CUSTOMERS WAITING ON LINE. "I don't care if I'm on fire or not, I'm going to pay for these artichokes!"
After about an hour or so of standing outside, we come back in and go to work again, and I go on break, so now, I've got only about an hour and a half left before I leave, so I go do all the random front-end tasks. Take the garbage to the back, cardboard, paper towels, return collection, and front-end blocking. Then I've still got 30 minutes or so, so they send me to go get plastic bags, D'oh! The best part was that I had to wait 10 minutes to find someone in the back who could pull the palette from underneath 2 other palettes of unrelated stuff. So bottom line, I hauled ass, spread them out, and just managed to punch out on time. Definitely a reminder of why I love this job.

Daily Life 2:
This happened just yesterday. Presidents day, and the college is closed, so Contini decides that it's a great day for the SOT clan to do something. Indeed it was. He never actually emailed me until the day before, but I heard from everyone else about the plans. So I got to his house around 1:30 or so, and Dan and Alpha were already there, playing with the Wii. This time, Dan actually brought all of his controllers with him, and I brought mine. We spend not even 15 minutes of that before we go out to eat, and me being the short-thinking idiot that I am, had a bowl of mac-and-cheese before I left. So we're at Bennigans, and everyone's enjoying their meals, and since now I'm going to try cutting back my food intake, I grab a thing of mozzarella sticks as a meal, and then have some fries. I don't want to talk about it too much because it's making me hungry. So we leave Bennigans, which was right on Route 1, so we decided to head to some electronics stores, as we're known to do. I just want to say, Electronics Expo, unless you're shopping for a new TV, don't go there. After wasting about 20 minutes comparing plasma's, we went to Best Buy. I bought Wario Ware, which I thought had multiplayer and that we could play back at Contini's house, but it didn't. It's ok though, that was the next game on my list of games to buy for the Wii. So we browse around there for say, a half-hour, then over to Funcoland, then Staples. I have never seen anything more awesomely pathetic in my life, when an advertising campaign takes over a store, to the point of selling Easy Buttons. They were literally just big red buttons that said "Easy" on them, like in the ads, and when you pushed them it said their slogan, "That was easy", it just speaks for itself.

Ok, so we're done with that, and we get back to Contini's house and play with Dan's Wii for the next 2 hours. Yes, don't say anything. It's amazing though, and the one time that Nintendo almost let me down, was when we went through all the games we had (Wario Ware, Excite Truck, Rayman, and Wii Sports), only to find that it was single player (WW), 2 player (ET), or required unlocking (Ray). We ended up playing a 4 player game of tennis on Wii sports for about an hour. Which is awesome in itself, mind you.So either way, that was my Presidents Day. George Washington FTW, bitches.


Reeses2150's DVD Reviews For The Intelligent Human:

The Departed. - 9.4
Note to self, never get involved in the Boston Underworld, or the Boston PD, or Boston. Where the hell to start with this movie. I thought it would be good, seeing as it got nominated for god knows everything, AND best picture, and it sure as hell was. As many great twists it had (the twists, as much as I normally hate twists, were placed so perfectly in this one), and the 3 big ending shockers (which you know I am NEVER going to reveal), I still think the Prestige was better. So here's my breakdown of the movie, as there's just way too much to cover by ranting about it.
Acting: EVERYONE hit home runs on acting in this movie. I became completely involved with their characters, and even forgot that D-Cap (as I call Dicaprio) was playing a starring role. Jack was insane, he almost made it hard to hate Costello. The acting was the best I've seen in a LONG time.
Story: Hard to follow at first, because it all starts off so quick, but once you figure out who's who, this story rivals much anything else. It has that type of sick and twisted humor that only mob movies can pull off, and brings it to another level. By the way, this movie had more F-bombs than the Japanese had BOMBS at Pearl Harbor.
Effects: Not much needed for this movie, but a lot of fake blood. Can a person really bleed that much in 1.2 seconds? There were at least 8 occasions where someone got a bullet in the head, I guess the special effects dept was really satisfied with the rig they came up with to shoot fake blood from the side of a guys head. Did I mention there was blood in this movie?
The Bad stuff: Ok, now to blast the movie. It was long as hell, 2 hours felt like 2 hours. I don't want to see what other people do in an adult film theater. The DVD extras I thought were a little lacking in variety, it all felt like a history class, including the "ripped from TV" Scorsese feature: no real behind the scenes anything.
I think that about covers it. Bottom line, if you haven't seen the movie, at least rent it and watch it once. It was definitely worth that much, but it's not the type of movie you want to see over and over again, because it was really all about "what happens next".

Juggle This:
Well, my video post about overheads was taken pretty negatively, I guess I forgot to mention in it how little I do overheads. Hey, give me points for trying here. I'm trying to get a few tricks on command, so that when I go back to Six Flags again, it'll be an easy job. I'm currently trying to get my 5 ball half-shower more solid, my club balance flips, and even more club moves. Luckily, they use Airflites there, so I'm with my preferred prop.

Oh, and the blog title (if you didn't figure it out) came from Wario Ware: Smooth Moves, The Departed DVD, the Shoprite story, and the Presidents Day story. Thank you, that is all.

A Day In The Life Of A Peanut Butter Cup ~ Reeses2150

Wednesday, February 14, 2007

 

3" of Heaven and Hell

Listen Up!
Wow, Zelda has sucked away so much of my life, I can't wait to beat it. Don't say anything about my schedule, I'm staying with it, time just seems to fly when you're playing the Wii. Ok, working on the Mobius-X.com redesign, I'm estimating I'll have it done within the next 7 days. That doesn't mean it'll be up, I'll just be done with it, and in the process of putting it online. Also, my new WMP update has been put on hold due to my overly fat to-do list and limited time. However, I am still getting more footage for my next video, still nameless.

Daily Life:
Snow. Awesome, and sucky, at the same time. Classes get cancelled, but I then have to shovel out my grandparents and our driveway. It's not that I mind the cold, in fact, I love the cold as people that know me know, but when you start working hard when you've got insulating coats on, it just plain sucks. My face and legs feel perfectly fine, and then the rest of my body just starts sweating like all living hell, and then it's even worse once you go inside, you're head starts sweating and burning, and you're body starts feeling colder. It just plain sucks.

Otherwise, no stories from Shoprite, no rants, no nothing. Just Zelda. Sorry...

Juggle This:
You'll see what I've done in my next video, I don't want to give everything away do I? I have been trying to come up with 4 ball shower variations though, I can now do a 4 ball [2 ball] multiplex shower for a qualifying run. You should be seeing that. Otherwise, the Shoprite Juggling video should be coming out around the same time as MX gets done, hopefully...

A Day In The Life Of A Peanut Butter Cup ~ Reeses2150

Sunday, February 04, 2007

 

Sole Survivor

Listen Up! EDIT!
<- Look at what I just managed to grab. I finally got myself a Nintendo Wii. Hellz Yeah. Ok, so here's the story. I wake up this morning (Monday) and head out for my Math class at MCC. On the way back, since the class ended early, I figured I'd run over and grab myself some lunch at the Stewart's on the road going between Woodbridge Ave and Route 1. After that was over, I figured I'd swing by Circuit City, as I heard that they (at one point in the recent past) had Wii's in stock for about 36 hours at one point. I thought that that would be my best chance to get one, was at CC. So whenj I went in and they didn't have one, it rekindled my fire, and I started planing out in my head how now I would be camping in front of CC when their shipments came in on Sunday. Thinking about games so much, I decided to swing past Gamestop, as it was on the way home from CC anyyways, to pick up a DS cartridge that I'd been wanting recently, Wario Ware. So I run in and crack a joke or two about how they fixed the display by the door (for the past few weeks, every time the door opened, a strong wind would blow over everything on display), and go on to looking at the DS rack. I jokingly remark to the cashier, "I don't even have to ask, you don't have any Wii's.", "Actually, we just got in a shipment this morning, and there's one left." Two words to describe my face, Christmas Tree. I hadn't even been seriously camping or hunting for one for the past 2 or 3 weeks, and then on a random side-trip, one just falls right into my lap. I grab it and I've been happily plugging away at Twilight Princess and Excitetruck for 8 of the past 11 hours (only taking time off to watch Heroes and do homework). Worth. Every. Penny. (for those who have their Wii's connected to the interweb, my console number is 3826 2488 3801 7008, add me to you're address books!

Listen Up! OLD!
No big announcements this week, though a few teasers. I'm working on a new, well, sort of new WMP skin project. Think about it for a while, and you should be able to figure out what it is. Also, I'm starting my next major Juggling video, no name yet, so don't expect it too soon. Otherwise my to-do list is just too big to list.

Daily Life:
Friday. Ok, so I'm scheduled 4:00 to 10:00 as usual, I come in and it is PACKED, luckily for me, all the registers were occupied as well. But they send me to #12 regardless, I scan all of 5 customers before they send someone to me and tell me to do returns. So I head down and do some returns. After about a half-hour of that, I get called back to the front, and they tell me to go give the guy on the food court register a break. They tell me specifically "come back here when you're done, don't take you're break yet." So I go over and give thew guy his break, nothing really special or interesting happens there, and so I go right back to the front when he returns and they send me to register #16 or so. I can't remember exactly which register because, here's the great part, after scanning ONE customer, they send someone over to me so that I can then take my lunch break. This is a little strange and funny, but nothing out of the ordinary for Shoprite.

I say hi to D on my way down the registers, she says she's feeling a little bit pissed because of her kids, so I decide not to bother her, and go take my lunch, where I manage to burn my mouth (which is still burnt by the way) from a hot package of Kraft Easy Mac, ow. Well, I come back from my lunch which is around 7:30 or so, and they tell me to do more returns, so I get to work on that. My second cart going to the produce section, and right after I grabbed it, I see D storming off to the punch clock, scoffing at the managers. She didn't say anything else, other than "That's it, I'm done. I quit.", and nothing specific about what happened. So I'm shocked and confused as to why she would quit after being happy here for the past year and a half. (Me and D both started working here from the same batch of employees, and she and I were the only 2 left who had never been fired or to have quit. Granted a few have quit and then come back, but that was just because they wanted the summer off or something.) So as I have to get back to work, seeing as how the managers were starting to come towards her, I had to run off in the other direction. I caught up with her later just as she was leaving the store, and she was talking with someone else, still in an almost blind-rage, talking about how "this person can yell at the customers, but I can't? It's favoritism!" . So I managed to gather from thast that she was possibly yelling at a customer for coupon hording with bad, expired, or otherwise not valid coupons and got yelled at by a manager, meanwhile the person a register or two away yelled at the same customer and didn't get yelled at (it's international coupon hording day, and everyone's coming in multiple times to horde coupons and stuff, I collected about 20+ coupons for the 5 customers I scanned all day). So that sucks, and now I'm the only remaining member of my batch of employees to never quit or be fired.

I ran returns for basically the rest of the night, through my break and after. I talked to my co-worker in the Bakery dept, who is a Diggnation fan and didn't realize until episode 68 that I was the juggler from 66. Talked a bit about the iPhone and episode 80 and stuff, so that was a nice break. Either way. So at about 9:10, right as I'm about to take the last cart of returns from the front, (yeah, there was that many) the managers stop me and have me run and refill the Spic n' Span bottles. It's amazing, how just 2 weeks ago, we didn't have enough for the front desk, much less the registers, and now we have two on each register. So after going to get a few bottles of concentrate for the cleaner (as noone ever bothers to refill the empty ones in the upstairs maintenance room), I manage to fill them all and punch out right at 10:07. All in all, it was an interesting day.

Juggle This:
I've started gathering footage on my next video, "#95". I'm recording some pretty good tricks already, how about a 5551 ran in a reverse cascade for about 20+ catches? What about some Triple Shower variations? Blind Catches to backcrosses anyone? More to come!

A Day In The Life Of A Peanut Butter Cup ~ Reeses2150

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