Kaisharga

I think I'm done with video games.

It's weird. It's been a full day and a half I haven't gamed, and haven't really felt a compulsion to do so. It's kind of freeing, and I'm not entirely sure what to do with my time. Thankfully I have a L5R game coming up that I am woefully underprepared for that I can do the research for, and a number of books I've been meaning to read. I will need more soon.

Once I can figure out exactly how to make it happen, I think I'm going to use this newfound time to get a headjumpkickstart on my plans to reenter the world of education. MIT has that OpenCourseWare thing, and I do have access to Wright State U's faculty and departments and so on, so I can find texts and syllabi and a few other resources for classes that will be in the (biomedical engineering, subtype pre-med) program that I intend to do. The fewer basic-shit classes I have to take, the better, and I'm feeling more focused lately so I think I can actually make something happen.

Does anyone have experience with Independent-Studying a class preemptively?

July 4 was fairly irritating for me. And after the fireworks thing, I decided I wanted some food and relaxation. I headed to Rally's on the way home from Fairborn where we had sat for explosion-times, and got some boneless wings, since their garlic parmesan sauce is delicious. Unfortunately, when I got home the place was chock full of people who were there hanging out. I don't generally mind this, but I didn't even have a place to sit down, much less relax. Fuck it, I said, and asked Apple to put my food in the fridge as I collapsed in bed.

Fast forward to the next day, at about noon. I pull my Rally's bag out of the fridge, and find that the boneless I'd ordered were covered in some sort of sauce which was spicy-smelling and red, neither quality being an identifying trait of garlic parmesan sauce. I checked the bag; no receipt, so I couldn't tell whether they'd taken the order wrong, or whether they fulfilled the order wrong. Mostly my former-restaurant-worker curiosity, there.

If I had ranch dressing, I'd have shrugged it off and eaten 'em anyway, but I can't just scarf spicy-sauced things straight--especially having been refrigerated; somehow sauces get spicier when stored. But I didn't, so I took the bag and got in my car and drove out to the restaurant, only about a mile away.

I got to the speaker-order-y thing, and explained the predicament. "Did you call in about it?" came the response.

"No, I couldn't call in, because they didn't give me a receipt and so I didn't have the number."

"We can't replace the order without the receipt and without your name on the list."

"Well, I have my credit card receipt, and it has the timestamp on it."

A pause. "Pull around, please."

I do. Someone who I later learned was the assistant manager greeted me--or, perhaps, ambushed me--at the window. "You'll have to call tomorrow, because our general manager is off today."

"I don't have the number. I have the food with me right here, and I have the credit card receipt..."

"The number should be on the credit card receipt."

"...I don't think you want me to call this number, I don't even recognize this area code."

"Let me see that." I hand over the receipt. She leaves with it, and comes back, having written a phone number and the general manager's name on the back, and hands it to me. "You can call this number and ask for her, because I'm not comfortable doing this without her."

Yeah, sure, whatever. I go and park in their tiny parking lot, and call the number.

I expected the number to be the manager's business cell phone, or home phone, or something. Turns out I was given the store number. For the store I was parked at. Where the general manager wasn't.

Fuck that shit. If they weren't willing to work with me, considering I had the uneaten food with me as evidence as well as the proof of purchase in the form of the credit card receipt, then they weren't worth my time. I went and got some Chinese.

Next day I called back once I had a minute and sufficient give-a-shit to deal with them. Manager wasn't there, presumably had left for the day. Fuck 'em.

That evening, the 6th, Tuesday, I decided I wanted some boneless wings on the way home. But fuck getting 'em at Rally's. So I ordered at BW-3. Got a bunch of different sauces, got some chips (potato slices, deep fried, unseasoned), and a little ranch on the side.

I get there, they have the order ready. "Would you like me to check that order for you before you go?"

"Yeah, if you would. I've had some bad luck lately with getting my stuff made right."

Cashier opens the first box. Four sides of ranch. "Wow, I only wanted one, but hey, I'll take the extra." Second box, basket of potato wedges (seasoned, but otherwise made as I ordered the chips). "Well, I guess that's okay. Wedges are good, and with the extra ranch that's perfectly fine."

Third box comes open. Regular wings, with one of the sauces I asked for. "Okay, at this point we have to stop, because these were supposed to be boneless." She opens the rest of the boxes just to be sure, and they're all also regular boneful wings. They screwed up my entire order.

And yet it was okay, because she had offered to check it right then and there, and didn't accuse me implicitly of trying to swindle them by lying about what I ordered.

And they fixed it, and gave me a soda while I waited. And put me on for a food credit for next time. And made me an order of chips as well, and let me keep the mismade wedges. So I got all the food I ordered and then some, and $15 credit, and a fairly nice chat with the manager of the place.

Fuck Rally's.

Been fighting depression again lately, in increasing amounts over time. Might have to go back to a medical professional and get on prescription meds again. Sucks. Especially since I don't know a physician to claim as my Primary Care one; the doctor who used to do my Family Doctoring has since left the practice, and I don't make it a habit to go to the doctor regularly for the sake of my wallet.

Our air conditioning is fixed! It no longer pees on us. I consider this a great improvement.

I really, really want to go back to school, but I sure as fuck do not have the time for it. There is no possible way I can work, get Apple to and from the shop every day, attend classes, and study outside of class while staying sane. That's without even considering the little things that crop up on a frequent basis that need done now now now that I always have to address.

I also want to start doing something physical, get back into shape, maybe take up freerunning. Again, no time.

The shop is becoming a money sink again, since most of our regulars are outdoorsy people who are doing other things during summer. Shini is essentially not working over summer, because there's not nearly as many classes to caption until Fall term. This leaves me right back in the decidedly unpleasant position of having to pay for a three-and-a-half person family essentially by myself, except that now we're so far behind on bills that almost every creditor I have has started sending me collection notices as soon as I'm late with one payment, instead of three or four down the line. Shini's spring income has been a great help, but it's planned to be running out soon and I just hope that we get our tax refund money before we end up having to go a month without power, or phone, or whatever.

Today, 5/26/10, I came home and recorded a video of a black pickup truck in the condo parking lot, sitting well away from any walls or curbs, and blocking at least two cars into their spots in the process. It is now 11:45 PM.

Why the shit is Street Fighter IV so goddamned terrible? That's rhetorical, I can mention a billion reasons it's a pile of shit; the real question is why they released it as a shitpile in the first place, and then rereleased it as another, fresher, bowl of ass a year and some later, having fixed basically nothing.

Our dryer was not unfixable after all! We just did not think to risk breaking the correct parts of the thing. Let's hear it for being able to do laundry in-house!

I am fairly convinced we cannot fix our dryer, and that it was never, truly, fixable. The blower connector that the primary motor is screwed into is so tight that any and all efforts to attempt to free one from the other have resulted in the plastic (!!) blower connector deforming in that way that waxy plastic does. I am pretty sure that no tool could have yielded any other result, given the bevy of methods attempted and forces applied with the same conclusion.

On the plus side, we get to get a new dryer (and probably matching washer), which will by necessity not suck. On the minus side, we have to get a new dryer (and probably matching washer), which will by necessity not be cheap. Hopefully we can actually get a decent model; our condo does not have a terribly large amount of space for these things.

Looks like it's laundromat time for us. Which is okay for a while; the laundromat within easy walking distance (if we need to) is actually a rather pleasant facility with very efficient machinery.

---

Apple and I went to an accountant today for our tax return schtick. Overall it didn't go too badly, but having to deal with the complexities and nuances of financial matters regarding the business was a little too much for me, and I was a little sad that I didn't feel capable of doing my own tax return this year without assistance. But the accountant is professional, friendly without being too familiar, and well versed in my sort of situation (it probably helped that she was informatively involved since the coffee shop's business inception), which is pretty comforting. A wash, overall, and that's without even considering the fairly gargantuan return amount I'm expecting.

Man. Paying so many of my bills feels nice, even if there are three more waiting in the wings (and will have to continue waiting a while--unfortunate considering two of the three are for condo dues).

I killed TV service in here, which saves us about $80 a month, cutting our AT&T bill by more than half (holy shit). And we can't use the main heater in the place anymore, since the cats have pissed and shat on so many things near it that I consider it a fire hazard, but refuse to touch their mess. (I'll have to look into whether the heat is what makes them so crap-happy about the area, though.) So that'll save some on the electric bill, too. These reductions are great, because property tax is due mid-late February, and is a whopping goddamned $500+. Not to mention that because of the coffee shop, my taxes are complicated enough that I'm going to have to enlist the services of a CPA.

Here's hoping I can keep the place for the duration, and that I can keep power and internets flowing.

I really, really wish that cats understood the concept of punishment, if only so I felt like I could do something about their habit of pissing and shitting on everything, like I could do something to change it. As it stands, cats are too fucking stupid to leave me any options besides "learn to live with it" and "murder the cats and fucking burn the place down."

The best thing I can say about Dark Void is that if you die, you lose very little progress.

Allow me to elaborate. If you have not heard, Dark Void is, essentially, "that game where you have a jetpack." There's some story in there about the Bermuda Triangle and secret puppetmasters and whathaveyou, but really? The jetpack is the only important factor here.

And they got the jetpack right. It controls exactly as speedy, as cumbersome, as versatile, as precisely, and as dangerously as it should. And everything you ought to be able to do with an infinitely-fuelled rocketpack, you can, and probably will, do. The rest of the game isn't a slouch, either--the ground game is essentially a slightly tweaked version of Gears of War, so it's familiar, navigable, and sensible.

The reason why dying making little difference is so great and so important to the game is that it encourages you to do ridiculous flyboy shit. In the demo, even, there's a tower that you have to enter, blow some stuff up, and leave. And being able, even encouraged, to fly through that relatively small door into the building, hoof it to your explosive destination, and hurl yourself violently out the window is beautiful.

This is probably going to be one of the permanent additions to my game library, like Ultimate Spider-Man for the XBox. I expect to find myself months, even years from now, having long since completed it, putting it back into the system again periodically just to fly around.

In summary: Jet. Pack. Yes.