Sunday, July 29, 2007

Tell Me Something That Doesn't Suck

Bought a new phone last Monday.
Not even a week's gone by and none of the buttons work now, so I can't use it. Kyocera sucks.

We got our fifth new modem in the last 2 years on Tuesday. The most recent one died when the power went out a few weeks ago during a thunderstorm.
It's raining today. The internet goes out every half hour. DSL sucks. Verizon completely sucks.

Wednesday, July 25, 2007

Cover Your Ass

"One thing about this business you gotta get used to. Whenever you're not around, someone's blaming you for something."

So said the new assistant I work with as we tried to reorganize all the work that's been done before us in order that the editors can better understand where everything is. We have to make everything so clear a five year old can understand. But that's our job.

I noticed that some of the editors were shutting down equipment improperly and leaving workstations a mess. This is something I was told not to do, so I mentioned it to the supervisor, see if we can't all do things the same.

"That's the problem," he laughed. "It's really their perogative to do whatever they want. And it's my job to tell you when you do things wrong."

"So even if they do something wrong..." I said.

"...It's your fault," he finished.

Ugh.

We've also tried to streamline our work to do it as fast as possible and with a minimial amount of effort on our part.

Said my co-worker: "An old school grip once told me, 'I want to do as little as possible and get paid the most for it.' "

Words to live by.

Wednesday, July 18, 2007

New Orleans Post Apocalypse

There's a web comic online that I just discovered called After the Deluge, about New Orleans in the aftermath of Katrina. And, it turns out, one of the characters in the comic, Leo, is a guy I used to work with at the Virgin Megawhore. In fact all of the characters are real people, telling their real stories of dealing with the hurricane and the rebuilding afterwards.

Looks pretty good so far.

Currently Enjoying...

A Root Beer flavored Dum Dum.

Tuesday, July 10, 2007

The Pool's Open!

I forgot what train I was on this morning coming home from work and ended up several avenues from where I wanted to be. I decided to walk home rather than backtrack on the train.

When I got to my neighborhood I decided to take a walk around the park to see if the pool had been opened yet.

It has! And what's even better, there are adults-only hours in the early morning so I can swim when I get home from work in the morning. Hot damn! Because it is sweltering in my apartment now and it makes it more bearable to know I only have to go three blocks to jump in the pool if it gets too bad.

Tuesday, July 03, 2007

Providence Attacks!

My friend Billy and I went up to Providence, RI on Saturday to see our friend Neil perform at the Providence Improv Festival with his improv group Dr. God.

Traffic was backed up everywhere. There was a two hour wait to get over the George Washington Bridge, so we decided to keep going north (we were in Jersey, coming from Hoboken) and use the Tappan Zee bridge. It was then that Billy asked me if I remembered the directions.

He didn't print them out because they seemed pretty easy. I told him that he should've used GoogleMaps and asked why he had chosen GoobleMaps. He said it just took a bit longer to translate the directions from Russian to English, but it sure beats WikipediaMaps. The problem with WikipediaMaps, we agreed, was that the directions are measured in "paces" and all the destination points are marked by a large X under a palm tree. You usually have to travel through a Thieves Forest of some sort and a Dragon's Glen.

We got there with enough time to knock back a few beers before the show. The bar next to the theater was pretty empty, but within ten minutes of getting our beers, it was beseiged by a group of 30 people looking to do karaoke. Billy informed me that as he was returning from the bathroom he saw a fight between four guys, arguing over who would get to sing "Ace of Spades".

Later we discovered that these karaoke addicts were in town for the Transformer's Convention. I didn't know that there was actually a convention devoted to Transformer's fans. Now I do. And so do you.

We ended up drinking until the early morning and then crashing on the floor of Dr. God's hotel room. We left early to get Billy's car out of the parking garage we had left it in, only to discover that all the gates were closed.

We called the number for the security group to open the gates.

"Yeah, we don't usually open until noon." Well, that makes sense, we thought. Who wants to get up that early on a Sunday? As it was 10:45 am we decided to wait and just walk around the town.

Everything was closed.

It appears that Providence does not open until noon on Sundays.

We returned to the garage at noon and it was still closed.
It was still closed at 12:30.

Eventually I noticed a tattooed kid and some guy entering the garage and opening a gate on the other side of the garage. We walked around as a car pulled out of the open gate and the tattooed kid started walking away. We approached the gate and it started closing!

We both contemplated diving under the thing like Indiana Jones, but then we'd be locked inside.

"Hey man!" I yelled.

The tattooed guy turned around.

"Oh man," he said. "You got a car in there too?"

"Yeah. Can we get it."

"OK. Hey, uh, listen, we're supposed to charge ten bucks for opening the garage after hours."

When we entered the garage it said it was ten dollars to park there, so we weren't paying any more than expected.

"Sure man, here"

"Yeah," the guy said. "The garage is closed on Sundays, cuz it's like, the summer, and stuff..."

"You guys should put up a sign to let people know that," Billy said.

"Oh man...there's no sign?"

"No," we both said.

"Shit."

Providence being the kind of town that doesn't open until noon, we could totally understand why you would close a parking garage on Sundays becuse it was the summer and stuff.