Wednesday, April 25, 2007

 

One Simple Friday


Listen Up!
MX Red - Standby, stage 3 of 4 :: Juggling Video 8 - Working, stage 1 of 3 :: Website Updates - Complete. Check it out. :: Other stuff is working.

Daily Life:
Now that you've skipped the announcements section looking for something interesting, I have yet another Shoprite story, that's not entirely Shoprite. FLASHBACK! WAY BACK! FRIDAY NIGHT!

Ok, so Friday was scheduled to be All College Night at MCC, and it was. Problem was, I forgot on Tuesday, to call Shoprite and request off for that day the week before. Stupid me, so I ended up being scheduled, 4 to 10:00. Which is a great thing, because I now actually have enough hours for my paycheck to be worth something, but it sucks because the ACN starts at 9:00. But what happened at Shoprite was awesome enough. First, as soon as I come in, I get sent out to do the ALS donations at the door, this is the last day they were going, and we were picking the winners of the raffle at the end of my shift. Not 10 minutes after I get out there, Joe comes past (the guy who pushed the shopping carts around the parking lot and getting them setup nicely) and says he needs my help. I ask what with, he says he's got a line of shopping carts (a line being that they are stacked within each other) half the length of the lot and needs someone to steer. I go out to help, and he wasn't kidding for crap. The line had to have at least 70 carts lined up, and it spanned at least a dozen parking spaces. No exaggerating, it probably weighed more than a small car. So, he starts pushing and I'm up front steering, and after not a hundred feet, he stops and says he'll have to split it up. Meanwhile, he's blocking 2 people from getting out of their parking spaces. I say "No. You steer, I'll push." I've never felt stronger in my life, it literally felt like I was trying to push a car around with it's parking brakes on. Regardless, I pushed it the remaining 200 feet or so to get it to the sidewalk, and run back inside to continue what I'm doing. Let me put it this way, he owes me one.

So after that happened, the rest of the day wasn't all that eventful. I took my break, which was strange how I only got one break for a 6 hour shift, usually it's a mandatory break and an optional 30 minute lunch which I would always go on. Regardless, the 30 minutes wouldn't have been paid anyways, so it's more money in my paycheck. So I come back from break, go out to collect the things and we draw the winners, which was fun in itself. A lot of the people didn't fold their things before putting them into the bins, so we spent at least 10 minutes folding every ballot for all 5 prizes. Then after drawing them, I helped the managers in the front call the numbers, and there was one number out of the five, that had a 908 area code. The only codes that can be called from the front end are 732. So I was given the task to run around and find out how the call a 908 number from the store phones, because we can't use cell phones. After a while, I found out that you have to dial 1908 on line 5 in order to place an outside call to a 908 number, so I did that and left a message on that persons answering machine.

So after THAT happened, there wasn't much left to do and they let me go 15 minutes early. Around 9:46 or so, and I rush out to drive to the MCC campus.


Daily Life 2:
NOW I can talk about All College Night. This is a very long blog post.
Ok, so I brought my Eat Sleep Juggle shirt with me and all my props in the truck while I was at work, and I was sitting there changing shirts and organizing things in the truck before I even left. I go out and get there around 10:10, which was a great amount of time, and when I got there, nothing was happening from what I heard. So from there, I started doing what? Juggling. A couple 5 ring runs, some club stuff, teaching someone the first steps to juggling 3 balls, you know, just social juggling. Then, around 10:30 or so, they turn off the lights in the techno room (also known as the Computer Enthusiasts Club's room), and free glowsticks. I knew about this being in the CEC club, so I knew exactly what I was doing. I borrowed some tape and 6 glowsticks, and taped them directly to my juggling clubs. Can you say life of the rave? Yes, there was an "expert raver" there, who really knew his way around glowstick handling, but I kinda stole it from him after not only taping regular glowsticks to my clubs, but some glow wristbands around the edge of one of my rings and starting to combine dance moves with ring spinning tricks. Awesome. At one point, I taped another glowstick in the middle of another of my rings, and grinded that one on the one with the ring around it. Let me just say, power gem. The picture is in the line of pictures below.

Then, all was great for a whole, then it got even better when the party started winding down. As I noticed Rishad was attending, who I hadn't seen since my Sophmore year of High School, so now I'm in contact with him again, and also, I found a bunch of balloons and did some helium voice stuff, which I'll put up on youtube at a later date. Also, while I was helping packing up all the DJ equipment, I did some cool stuff, including balancing a 30lb, 9' tall tripod on my chin. Bottom line, it was like any other party, only much more awesome. Pictures below, and I didn't talk too much about it because this post was already long enough.

: : : : :
And for more pictures of me and others, go to TechMCC.com
Also, there's a video here On YouTube.


Juggle This:
Jugglers On Juggling is awesome. We're about to release episode 4 soon, and we've got an idea floating around, that's not set in anything yet. So I won't talk about it.

As for what I've juggled recently, well, footage for video 8. Including a cool 4 ring string that I got earlier today, and a nice 5 ball string which I already mentioned, as well as a few other things. I think I'm finally getting good enough to be somewhat impressive. We'll have to wait and see though. Expect video 8 to come out sometime late next month.

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

Wednesday, April 18, 2007

 

Unoriginal Titles Abound


Listen Up!
MX Red project still in the works. I've finally started work on my next juggling video, no word on release. Jugglers On Juggling is going normally. I've just moved from Myspace (un-updated btw) to Facebook and it's much better. Nothing else to report. So on to this week's story.

Daily Life:
Well, now at Shoprite, since Easter has passed and the outside register is no longer there, They've been putting me up front near the entrance to get donations for ALS (a central nervous disease). We had this thing going where we'd have a number of baskets of things setup o the table, and whenever someone would make a donation, they'd put their name and number in one of the boxes for one of the baskets, and then there would be a drawing later. I sold a bunch over the 3 days I was out, but the best thing that kept me laughing for about 10 minutes afterwards was this.

Every time someone would walk by, I would say "Hello. A dollar for ALS and a chance to win?" or some variation of that. There was a group of kids about 17 years or so that had just got stuff from the vending machine right around the corner, and right as they passed, there was another person behind them that was looking like they were going to donate. SO I go "Hello!" and I didn't realize it was right as one of the kids was right in front of me and taking a sip, next thing I see is him spitting orange soda around not 1 foot directly in front of me. I could not stop laughing for like 10 minutes until the maintenance guy came and mopped up.

And thn on Sunday, it was a huge storm the day before, everyone got flooded, and I came into work the following day. There was absolutely nothing they had for me to do. They practically sent me home as soon as I came in, I left like a half-hour early. I know this section makes it sound like Shoprite doesn't like me, trust me, it's exactly the opposite. I don't like being on register as much as doing all the odd things that everyone else won't do. It works.

Juggle This:
JoJ ep2 went good. We actually didn't receive much bad responses from it, in fact, one guy said it's "his new favorite podcast, juggling or not!" Awesome. So expect things to only get better from here. If we've already got a positive opinion, and we still haven't worked out all the kinks, you know it's going to be good. That being said, I can now announce who is going to be in episode 3. None other than Joe Showers. So get ready for that.

In non-podcasting juggling news :P, I recently pulled off my first true 7531 under an 8' roof today. Also, in the past week, I've started getting the hand-balance double spin down. Nowhere near on command, but I'd say I've made it at least a dozen times now. I think that's going to be one of my big tricks when get it to be on command.

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

Wednesday, April 11, 2007

 

Headline reads: "JoJ Alarmingly Whatever!"


Listen Up!
If you haven't noticed, Jugglers On Juggling has released it's first episode, we'll call it episode 1, featuring guest Jason Garfield. Now that I'm done milking that cow,I have to announce that the next episode is due on on April 16th, and will feature a much less known juggler, who I'll announce later. This is to show, we're not just for the big names, but for everyone and anyone. Also, the MX Red project is on it's way, and I'm still yet to say a release date. Maybe next week...

Daily Life:
Well, not much happened recently. So this segment is going to be pretty boring, or is it?

Shoprite. Well, one of my dreams for this job has come true. For the past 3 work days, they have allowed me to work on the outside register selling potted plants. You're asking, "Why would you want to do that?" Simple, and numerous. I'm outside, where the temperature is nice and I am not sweating like hell. I'm outside, away from all the crowds inside and the constant scanning. It's a much more social register than any of the inside ones, I can actually have a conversation with a customer or a friend that lasts longer than 15 seconds. And I'm able to use a hand scanner to scan less than 3 items, where the only other place I can do that is Food Court. So for that, I'm in heaven, but for the most part, over the past 3 days being outside, there really wasn't much happening, until Saturday.

I'd just finished scanning a customer, and everything's going as it always is outside, then out of nowhere, 2 fire trucks come barreling down the street and rushing right in front of the store. I walked in front of my register to look above the store, and not seeing any smoke, I figured there must have been another alarm malfunction, like the one that happened a few months ago, and that I would begin to see everyone evacuating the store. Well, I didn't, instead, I see the firefighters in full uniform rushing out of the truck and then looking up, then standing there confused. Then, after a minute or two, just as I'm deciding whether to approach them or go inside and call the store managers, I see them (the store managers) running outside almost in a panic, trying to find out what's going on. I can't really hear them too much, as they were on the center part of the front, and I'm way off to the side with my plants, so when everything's done and the trucks leave, I ask Mr. C about what's going on.

He tells me that the guys at the fire station got an alarm going off from the MINI-MALL alarm on the top of the building. Not the fire alarm for Shoprite, but the fire alarm for the ENTIRE LOT, the one that's silent to everyone but the fire station. The one that's on top of the roof outside, and needs 2 different sets of keys to get to. One from the Shoprite store manager, the other from the lot owner, who's out for dinner. I cracked up immediately, and Mr. C just laughed right with me. So about an hour later, the mechanic and lot manager show up to fix the alarm, and the rest of the day was pretty uneventful. Hell of a story though, and that's one more reason why I love my job.

Juggle This:
Well, what to say. I got a lot of mixed feedback on the first episode of JoJ, but the great thing is, none of it was bashing or flaming. That's why I love the juggling community, there is very little hatred, and effort put into something IS appreciated. That being said, I do believe that some improvements need to be made to JoJ also, and we're doing so for episode 2, which will be recorded shortly. A few of those changes I've already mentioned on the WJF forums, here's the quote.

Ok, well here's the changes me an Marty have agreed upon (so far) for future episodes. We're definitely going to have a 3rd guest on each week, and the fixed schedule for the show being [Announcements, Preview, Video's, Main/secondary]. The announcements section should be obvious, any announcements pertaining to the podcast, myself, or Marty. Preview being basically us saying what we're going to cover in this episode, before the episode starts. Video's being a now official segment, where we'll review at least 2 juggling videos each episode, no matter whether they're new/old/off the mainstream/whatever. Then the main section featuring the guest host talking about the main topic, as well as joining in the discussion of the "Secondary" section, another new segment. In "Secondary", we will choose one topic from each of the three major juggling forums [Gatto, WJF, Rec.Juggling], and briefly (they have to be short for time reasons) discuss and debate them.

And as a new rule, we don't start recording until we have the 3rd host on the line.

We've got more updates coming, so the next episodes can only get better. Now that we have the organizational stuff sorted out, our next internal problems to solve will be quality of audio and "other". See you all on Monday with Episode 2!


OH! And I also qualified 6 balls again yesterday, not on camera though. But who cares about that?

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

Thursday, April 05, 2007

 

More Than Less Than You Thought You Knew


Listen Up!
I've started a new podcast. Not part of Mobius-X, but only under the 3LN name. "Jugglers On Juggling", hosted by myself and Martin McCrory, is the first American podcast focused entirely on Juggling. Nothing else, just juggling. News, interviews, opinions, debates, props, whatever. If you can manipulate it, we'll probably talk about it. The first episode is scheduled to release on Monday, April 9th, and will feature Jason Garfield as a special guest.
Other projects on my to-do list include MX Red (being pushed back to an unscheduled release date due to changes), and that's about it. All my other projects are in "cryo", or basically, They won't be done anytime soon, so don't even bother mentioning them. Otherwise, enjoy the new podcast when it premieres.

Daily Life:
Well, you may have noticed that I'm late with this blog post, that was intentional, as I wanted to write about today. What happened today might you ask? Well, just a little thing called the Diggnation Meetup and Screening in NYC. How about that? Before you ask, yes, it was worth the $50 totaled up. Ok, so here's what happened.

I go to my normal classes at MCC, which would then get out at 5:00, and I planned to catch the 5:40 bus to NY that leaves from right in front of my house. The schedule said the bus would arrive by 6:40, giving my ample time to get to the theater on 3rd Street. I forgot though, it never takes less than an hour to get through the Lincoln Tunnel anytime between 5:00 and 8:00. So It's 7:00 already when I hail a cab to get there. Takes another few minutes, and then I arrive and sit down with everyone else. Gordon, the leader of the computer club at MCC, who was supposedly going to go as well, didn't show up, and I was the only one there. But that was ok, after the episode was done being shown on the movie screen (the premise was that they would rent a movie theater and play the latest episode of Diggnation there), and the lights go up, people get their first look at me, and immediately I get those "you look familiar" looks. As we head downstairs for pizza and to hang out as planned, someone finally realizes I'm Reeses from episode 66. I had brought my juggling equipment with me for this very purpose. I gave a quick show, much to the approval of the 30+ people there, and continued to hang. The hanging out downstairs had to be the best part though, as it was the best discussions I've heard and been involved in in a while. Felt good to be with a bunch of true geeks who know what's going on, and will listen to anything I have to say, lol.

So after an hour or two of that, plus free pizza while everyone was there, I catch a cab as everyone else over 21 heads to the bar which was giving a special discount for all the Diggnation fans coming over. I get to the bus station and head home, feeling awesome. I'm definitely going to the next one, and this time, I'M GETTING AN EARLIER BUS.

Juggle This:
If you haven't heard, or didn't read the "Listen Up" section of this page, "Jugglers On Juggling", the first American podcast dedicated to Juggling, will premiere it's first episode on Monday, April 9th, and will feature special guest Jason Garfield.

In other, more juggling related news, I've been working on my 5 ball stuff in getting ready for WJF4. I can now call my cascade and half-shower performance ready, and my reverse cascade on-command. Otherwise, I've been trying to remaster some of the tricks from my earlier videos. You see, when I make a major video, usually one of 2 things will happen to the trick I performed in the video, it will either become an on command trick, or I will never bother doing it again. I'm trying to work on those "never do them again" tricks. Things like the 4b multiplex backcross, multiplex shower with 4, 3c back passes, and a bunch of other stuff. It's working, let's put it that way. I can't wait for WJF4.

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

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