Tuesday, June 26, 2007

 

I Will Remember This.

Listen Up!
Well, the site that I've been working so hard on and helping with, Mobius-X, has been hacked. Not like a fake or script kid hack-job, but they literally screwed over the forums in a way that we were lucky to even get the forum restored to start from scratch. I'll post the whole story below. :: JoJ is hitting some rough patches with guest hosts, I've just sent out a new batch of emails asking people if they want to be on, hopefully someone will reply and be able to do episode 12. To be brutally honest, Steve isn't exactly the best co-host. He doesn't really have much of a serious opinion, much less one that he can argue with me about and explore a topic with, and he's generally more of a distraction and a way to bring in the sudden childish laugh. It's almost bad. Hopefully I'll get some other guests lined up for the next few episodes. :: Basic6, as much as I hate to do it, is delayed again. I've gotten busy with so much other crap now, and with MX being hacked, I just don't have time for it. Thankfully though, all the major hard parts are done, so when I work on it again, all I really have to do is cosmetics, redoing the help menu, and then making a preview image and submitting it everywhere. So expect it sometime before the end of July at WORST.

Daily Life: 1 of 3 : Shoprite
Well, story you ask? Stories you shall receive. This week was definitely interesting, so I'll go into a very brief description of each day.

Wednesday: Come in at 3, finding I'm scheduled 5-10. Hang out for 2 hours at Gamestop working on Pokemon Diamond, as I'm now trying to collect all 500 for the national 'Dex. So then I punch, and the rest of the day was fairly normal, spend the first 3 hours of my shift on the outside register, then bring the register upstairs and help put the stuff away from outside, go on my break, then come back and spend the last 2 hours or so between register, returns, and other stuff. A perfectly normal day for me.

Thursday: Remember that I'm scheduled from 5-10 this time, come in and have basically the same day as the one before, except this time I don't spend any time on register after my break, but go straight to doing Cleaner Bottle refills. So I didn't spend any time at all on the registers inside, and I was lucky as hell too, because the lines were up to the aisles. So I had a good day.

Friday: This was the start of the fun days. I'm scheduled from 5-12. The midnight shift, one that I've heard so many rumors about, all different, and one I've never done before. So I come in, do my usual thing on the inside registers this time for the first few hours, go on my first break; come back and go do the cleaner bottles again and some more stuff on the registers, then go on my second break, and then when I come back it's 10:00, when the fun begins. You'd be amazed at the midnight crowd. Logic would say that the crowds would be less, but in fact they're just as intense. Reason? There's about half of the people that normally come into the store, but only about a third of the normal cashier roster. So there's only about 20 customers in checkout at any one time, but there's only about 4 cashiers working the registers, 5 or 6 on a good day like today was. So bottom line, I go through the normal hell for the next 2 hours, then as soon as I leave, what do I see? The lines magically disappear at midnight, exactly. Figures right?

Saturday: Now the fun REALLY begins. Shift was 3-10. The first thing I do when I get into the store is to refill the plastic bags. I look and see absolutely NONE on all the registers, and I know it's gonna suck. I had no idea. I go into the back to find that the yellow bags for the normal registers were under a half of a palette of white express bags, and it's in a place where they couldn't be moved in any way other than to take them down and bring them to the registers. So i have to climb around the mountains of groceries in the back to get to them, I unload the white bags and distribute them to the front. Which that sentence will never sound as sucky as it really is to do it. So then after THAT'S done, then I can actually begin what I'm supposed to do. More climbing, unloading the bags from the palette one at a time and putting them onto the U-boat to move them to the front. Bring them to the front, unload them all one by one into each of the registers, and then do it all again for the second half of the registers (1 U-boat can fit only half of a palette at best, so it's at least 2 trips). Let me just say, the only things keeping my from collapsing was Mountain Dew, Vitamin Water, and adrenaline. So I'm jacked up as I go out for my first break. I come back and am put on register, and I'm already hot as hell, so I'm thanking every single gods I know of that I was smart enough to buy my own mini-fan at Walgreens for $8 to put on my register each day. So again, I'm on register, and it's moderately crowded, so my being jacked up actually helped me out, as I was able to clear through customers faster than anything. So by the time I realize it's time for me to go on my next break, it's already somewhere around 8:30 or so. So I run off, play some more Pokemon, and then come back 15 minutes later. By this point, the adrenaline, Mountain Dew, and Vitamin Water have worn off, and now I'm starting to feel the pain of unloading all those palettes earlier, and to be honest, I can't even remember what happened for the last 2 hours of my shift. All I know is that I left, got home, and collapsed into my bed and fell asleep. I didn't have the energy left to do anything.

Sunday: You're tired of reading already and you're only halfway through this week's post, so I will be brief here. I came in thinking I had a 3:00-12:00 shift, which was going to suck to all lengths, and then I realize after not being able to punch I had the shift from 5:00-11:00. So I don't feel that bad. It was again a normal day, and the only real things that sucked was all the coupon hoarders coming in because of the start of double-F'n-coupon week. Wonderful. Plus I was on register 3 for half my shift, and it was one of those days when there was a crowd of people with less than 20 items, so today was not a day to be there. But either way, I battle through it all, and through the pains of blocking items, returning items, and doing all the other stuff, which I normally love, but didn't feel like doing that day. Also going through a run at the outside register and food court in the same shift. Either way, it sucked, and I went home tired again. It was what I like to call an "I just did everything" day.


Daily Life: 2 of 3 : New York F'n City!
That's just a picture of me standing in heaven. Also known as the Dube Juggling Store in NYC. F Yeah. So after all those bad days at Shoprite, I deserved something good to happen, and hell yes this was it. I went to NY on Monday for the 4th Diggnation Meetup, but since classes have ended, and I had no reason to have to wait for the 5:00 bus, I decided to take the 4:00 in, and go visit Dube, as I'd been meaning to do since I learned it was in NYC. It may be the size of a small apartment, but it's every jugglers dream. The infamous wall covered in clubs, torches, and knives. The rack with all types of rings, and the best part is the special prices on stuff that's only available INSIDE the store. I bought, 5 3" stage balls, 2 3.5" stage balls, 2 illuminated's, and a prop bag. How much did I spend? $40. Yes, the stage balls were all a buck a piece, the 'nateds were defected slightly and only $10 a piece, and the prop bag was 14. That was awesome. I spent maybe an hour in that one room just trying out as many props as I could. I hope that when I die, there is a heaven, and it's just like that, even the roof height was about 11', perfect.

Enough about Dube though, that's only half the reason I went to NYC. The Diggnation Meetup was more awesome this time than ever before. The final tally of people that showed up was somewhere in the 80's. That place was PACKED. And the best part was, I had just come from Dube, so I had all my normal props, plus a bunch of new ones I was itching to break in, including my 'nateds. So I'm there, and the great thing about larger crowds is that there are more people that can/have tried juggling themselves, and I ended up hanging out and exchanging contact info with 2 of them. One of them is Jacob Jay ( jacobjay.com ). He was pretty awesome, considering he doesn't actually know how to juggle, but he's really quick to understand it, and not only that, but he does a LOT of the same stuff I used to do, javascript, modding, leeching, pretty much everything with technology I do, he's done. Awesome. But so there was free pizza, I stuck with water because since I'm juggling so much, any soft drink or anything else I can order will 1.Cost money, and 2.make me thirstier. So I stuck with free water, and I didn't spend a dime the entire time, hey look! A Rhyme! Lol. Enough of that, episode 103 was schweet, and the atmosphere is as good as whenever you get 80 nerds and geeks together into one space talking about technology. If you're a geek in the Jersey area, professional or not, whether you watch Diggnation or not, go there next month.


Daily Life: 3 of 3 : MX Got Haxxored!
Almost done, I promise. Well, the forums got hacked, not by script kids, or fake hackers, but Dan pissed off someone, and this group of hackers completely destroyed the forums, enough so that they were rendered useless and we had to completely replace them from scratch. Ok, so I actually came online and logged in right in the middle of the attack, they had already deleted Dan's manager account, and replaced all the forum skins with their own skins. Luckily no porn, that's the sign of a real hacker, is that they don't need to put up porn on your site. So I came on and was like "Holy S---! We got hacked! Oh well, time to restore the boards." and I proceed to start fixing the boards, not realizing they were still online and in the process of hacking, and they proceeded to remove me as well. It was a bit of a battle for about a minute as I was trying to restore myself while they were deleting me, but they got it eventually. So then I figure, "well, I may as well post to the shoutbox and make a new invisionfree board." So I do just that, because if they're smart enough to delete me, I know they've destroyed it, and the old invisionfree MX was just crap. So I went and made Project Orange, which went for about a day whilest me and Dan tried to figure ways to restore the board. Eventually, I gave up, and then Dan realized that he already had a spare forum code already on the site! And proceeded to copy it. Then came a whole battle between me and Dan of "I want to open it NOW!", "No, we should wait until I finish restoring the skins, forum subjects, and other settings so people won't complain about it being buggy.", "NO! IT OPENS NOW!", "Let me finish, I'll tell you when to open it." Then i go off to NYC yesterday, having only finished about 75% of the forum, and he goes and opens it behind my back. Sometimes I just want to open my own forums, exactly like MX, and run it myself, that way nobody makes any stupid management decisions. But then I realize, "Hey, you're the only guy keeping that place together. Dan wouldn't have even klept it going if not for me.", and I plod along, with my following and such. So now things are back up, and I actually think it's good we got hacked. It's news that drew all the members back into posting, PLUS it's a clean slate where everything can start fresh. Awesome how things work out.

And thus ends the longest personal blog post in the history of Blogger. As a reward for your making it all the way to the end, you have received:
1000 reading skill points
2 digital cookies
and 1 guy applauding you in the back.

A Day, Or Week, In The Life Of A Peanut Butter Cup ~ Reeses2150

Wednesday, June 20, 2007

 

The Lazy Battery

Listen Up!
MX Red is being worked on, by me now. I was leaving it to Dan, so that he could hopefully learn some html and javascript, but then again, right now I'm just limiting myself to the flash page, as it's a really complex page with stuff he can only dream of understanding right now. :: JoJ is running smoothly. Episode 10 is I think, our funniest episode, and go listen to it. :: I've pulled my WMP project out of cryo because I was bored today, and was inspired at the same time. One of those perfect moods to get something done, and I actually did. So I'm announcing it now, BASIC VERSION 6. I'll be releasing it and revealing more details next week. But yes, I'm upgrading my best skin, yet again, and this time it's more than just a re-hash.

Daily Life:
Nothing really interesting to talk about here, other than the fact that I finally had 2 days off to myself to just sit and relax. Except I chose to spend them catching up on my juggling, and getting back everything, because after 4 days of not practicing ANYTHING, I was rusty as hell. I'm back now though, and I've got a few things that will happen before this week is over. One is a BBQ done by the Tech MCC club over at Roosevelt Park, that's on Thursday before work. The next is the next Diggnation Meetup in NYC, which is on Monday, and I will definitely be giving a report on next post. But otherwise, yeah, not much to say here. This could be the first week since I switched back to blogger that I haven't had a story worth telling.

Juggle This:
I'm still practicing flourishes with clubs, and I'm slowly getting better at them. More of what I'm practicing though are my box tricks and 5551 variations. At WJF4, I'm planning on competing in the beginners comp as well, so I've got a string I'm doing for it. It's a normal 5551, to 2 cycles of 5551 with reverse cascade throws, to 1 setup cycle, to a 5551 with the 1 btb. Hard, but I'll be able to do it easily by then. As for the box tricks I'm practicing, well, you'll just have to wait for the next video, which is actually coming not too far away. I've started gathering footage (well, what I can considering I'm locked down at the house every moment that I'm not working), and have about a minute's worth of final cut worthy material. Whatever, we'll see what happens. I know it's not going to be anywhere near as big as Standard Deviation was, but who knows...

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

Wednesday, June 13, 2007

 

Fighting Fire With Marshmallows


Listen Up!
JoJ. Episode 9 was a bit of a let-down, but episode 8 is still climbing in downloads, it's up past 400! Jason had to pull out of episode 10, so we'll see if someone else can be on, if not, we'll postpone the episode. :: MX-City is again in cryo, so I'm helping instead with the MX-Red project. IDK. Cutenews is an interesting thing, and I'm starting to figure it out. We'll see what happens, even though I never did like the idea of a static frame size site. :: Summer semester is almost over. Actually, tomorrow is the last day, SWEET! Now all I have to deal with is work sucking away my free time. :: I released a new DeviantART photo batch. About damned time too. go check it out.

Daily Life:
Shoprite. I'll never stop getting stories from this place, I swear...
Ok, Sunday. Arrive at 3:00. Get ready for my full on 8 hour shift until 11:00. I take one look at the lines and go "Crap..." Every register is stocked and the lines are to the aisles. They put me on # 13, the half-broken register that has got a nail sticking out of the scanning surface that will slit your wrists if you miss, a busted open light that doesn't work all the time, a keyboard stand that likes to collapse and fall over, and a scanner that doesn't like scanning. Wonderful.

So I do my time there about an hour and a half's worth, then I get called to go outside. And I spend the next hour and a half out there. While I'm out there, I get bored, and start juggling these sticks. They're actually from those American flags you'll stick in the lawn, only someone stole the flags, and there were 5 1/2 cm wide, 12" long sticks just begging to be juggled. I start doing some stuff, and they are REALLY hard to do. I could barely do a cascade with 3, much less tricks. But nonetheless, I decided to try flashing all 5, and on the 14th try, I got it. I was ecstatic, and bouncing around inside, but remained calm and as concealed as I can on the outside as not to disturb the customers any more-so than the juggling did.

So I go in and take my lunch break, and it's good. I had the pizza, which was still horribly expensive, but good because Tiffany made it today. Played Pokeman Diamond, and while I was there, and I also caught Mesprit, which I had failed to do for the past week, and was training a 'mon for specifically to be a Mesprit catcher. Figures I caught Mesprit right after he killed the one I trained and right before he ran away. Enough about Pokemon though...

So by lunch break is over, and I get asked to do returns, and I see there's about 7 carts full of returns, and another employee collecting even more off of the registers. So I figure "Well, there goes the next 3 hours." And I was right too. After about 2 hours of that, I was then told to go on my last break and then refill all the cleaner bottles and paper towels when I got back. Nothing really happened on my break, and the next hour after it was spent filling up cleaner bottles. I've refilled them so many times, I've got a perfect system now to do it, including a way to hold the door open so that it doesn't overheat inside the small closet. But that's besides the point. Point is, I take my time, finish that, come back to the front (which the lines are still insane), and with only another hour left in my shift, I bring things upstairs, garbage to the back, etc, and then block (organizing products on the shelves to look nice) for the last hour of my shift. Go home, and then I collapse.

I was Rd all that time on the registers inside with those mad lines. I guess that's the best part about being on the head manager's good side.

Juggle This:
Well, I may have been working on my picture frame routine, but literally not 20 minutes ago, I dropped the frame while trying something, and it split in half on 2 of the corners. So I guess I'll have to construct a new one soon, and the stand while I'm at it. As soon as I get a free day where I have neither work, class, or other obligation, I'll start working on it.

In other, less negative juggling news, I'm working on my 5551 with the 1 btb. It works very well, and I can get it on every other attempt. I'm still trying to think of 5 ball patterns and tricks I can do under my 8' roof, but for now, I'll just keep practicing my half-shower and reverse cascade. Also, I worked a bit on my 7531's after class today. I'm slipping, and it really sucks not having enough time or gas money to get to a regular practice space indoors with a roof higher than 8' and a temperature lower than 80 degrees. It just sucks.

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

Wednesday, June 06, 2007

 

Sleep Is Good

Listen Up!
Everything is in cryo except for JoJ, my next DeviantART batch (which should be up this week), and that's it. I'm taking all my time up with school and work, and I've really only got 2 half-days off and I intend to enjoy them as much as I can, while I can. Things will pick back up after the 15th or so, once class ends. Then I'll have the ability to actually get stuff done without sacrificing sleep.

Daily Life:
Woodbridge Avenue. I hate it. Especially when they decide to do construction and reduce the road to one lane at a major choke point during mid-day hours, for about 7 hours, encompassing both my trips to and from class. Needless to say, I'm almost late for every class, even though i leave nearly an HOUR early. I HATE THEM.

Moving on, I love Shoprite. My last paycheck was over $150, and so will all the other ones for the rest of the summer. What's better is that now I'm regularly being put on the outside register, aka. my happy place at Shoprite. So I've gotten myself a new pair of sunglasses from the bins which have been placed outside, the sunglasses literally priced at $1.99 a pair, and they're decent sunglasses. They look awesome, and I haven't stopped wearing them, because they're almost completely clear and have barely any tint. I've always thought I'd look good with glasses, and have wanted to wear them since I was out of middle school, but I have 20/20 vision, so I don't have an excuse to wear a pair. Now I have a pair, and no excuse to wear them, other than they look good. I love being me.

But back to the fun stories that keep you (all 4 of you) coming back every week. So on that note, on to what actually happened on Sunday. I know this shift is going to be hell, because I'm there from 3:00 to past 10:00. So I get there, punch, and bring my till to the front for register assignment. Seeing as how there are literally 5 more people waiting for assignment, and lines everywhere, I figure I'm going to go to a register like 10 or something, because it just fits with the way my luck runs on days like today. By a cruel twist of fate, after I'm already bummed and psychologically preparing myself for the hell that surely awaits me, M+++++ says "Rich! Outside, give Kyle his lunch." "Yes Ma'am!", and I run outside, my face beaming. The outside register is always the best, because you obviously don't have as many customers, but also because you can actually get some wind blowing to cool you down, which unless you're on the extreme ends of the register lanes (registers 4, 5, 9, and 19), it's still air, and hot as hell. What made it even better outside was that it was raining. I love the rain, and I don';t mean it was just like a drizzle or anything, it was pouring. I was in heaven, which is a rarity at Shoprite, so I did the best job I could to help people and enjoy every minute of being outside.

So finally, it comes time for my lunch break, after 3 hours of outside. I go in, punch, eat my pizza (which was crappy and expensive, as usual), relax and play Pokemon Diamond (which I've started playing again after about a 2 week lull from beating the elite four and only now just getting the national map open). So that's finished, and believe my surprise when they tell me to do the garbage and then go back outside to let Kyle go home.

So after another great 2 hours, I go back in and on my last break, and by now, I've only got another hour and a half left on my shift. One of the best things about me being outside that whole time was that the lines inside, they didn't let up all day, and every register was stocked. So I come back from my last break, bring in the register from outside and store it away upstairs, then proceed to start doing returns and other random tasks for the remainder of my shift, which the strange thing was, despite the fact that there was a ginormous crowd the entire day, there were barely any returns to put away at all. So I spent most of my time collecting and then blocking aisles before I left. I know the next few shifts I have are going to be hell, due to the Neutral Day Theory, but it was worth it.

Juggle This:
66661, if I forgot to mention last time. I first flashed it to a collect under my 8' roof, then I flashed it into a qualifying run, barely. I've yet to get it since, but I have been working on my flourishes, and have gotten to the point of having many of them performance ready. Flourishes are really quite fun once you start to understand them and play around with them successfully. Now, that aside, the latest episode of JoJ, "Garfield's Gone Wild" has proven to be probably the best episode yet in terms of people liking it. It's already got more than 150 downloads in the first 24 hours, and doesn't look like it's stopping there. Go ahead and give it a listen!

So until next time, I'll enjoy my 7 day week and sleep deprivation for the next week or two, then I plan on imploding and just not waking up for a full 48 hours once school is over. Until then, sleep is godly.

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

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