(no subject)
Looks like it's been a month or so since I updated, so here we go again.
About two (maybe it's now three) weeks ago, my best friend Chris and his wife came to town to visit for the weekend. He only gets to come up about once every six months or so, so I don't get to see him as often as I'd like. Of course, I should go visit, but without a car, it's not exactly easy to do that.
They got to my house at about midnight on friday night, and we were supposed to meet several people at Hudson's. I think the party was Joann (sp?), her fiancee, Jon Swanson and his girlfriend, Val, and probably others that I can't remember. Of course, the person at the door of the restraunt wouldn't let us in, despite that Chris and Melissa had driven nine hours to get to town, and that we had a party waiting inside, they didn't even care that we didn't plan on ordering anything. Even the group inside said "we just got a couple pitchers of beer, we're not going to be able to finish them without help." Still nothing. So, the people inside left, we all talked in the freezing parking lot for a bit, then went to joann's apartment and talked for a while.
Chris came by my place the next day, and we did a shot of the fucking awesome rum that morty bought me for christmas, and mostly just hung out. Went to jilbert's and had fun chatting with the girl working behind the counter, then just wandered the mall for a bit before he had to go somewhere with Melissa. We all met up again at nineish and went to Vango's. A quiet, but fun weekend.
On a down note, the hard drive on my laptop died horribly... It had been acting up since tuesday, and hindsight being 20/20, I think it was the drive wiper I was trying out... wanted to permanently purge something, and technically it worked, but the cost of doing so sucked. I've attepemted what could be called heroic measures on the machine : I snagged my Knoppix liveCD and attempted to get to the drive from there, but to no avail.
Because of the drive crash, I had to cancel a shadowrun game. Doesn't help when my bot software is on a dead drive. Reweriting something that poorly kludged together is a pain in the ass.
Knoppix was an interesting experience. Having no linux experience beyond logging into various shell accounts, it was pretty difficult to figure out a lot of what would otherwise be basic things. I spent an evening running back and forth between one machine running Knoppix and the decrepit 233 while Todd gave me suggestions and diagnotic commands to run. I picked up on a lot of useful things, and will probably be able to figure out more if I take some time to RTF manpages. But not now.
Work sucked for about a week. They rationalized that since spring break was coming up, that they could have my last cashier leave at midnight instead of 12:30 (it used to be 1am!). Given that I'm running reports and closing the liqour department at midnight, this is less than optimal, since they usually have to shut down the register 15 minutes earlier than they punch out so they can clean the belts.
This week, while it's been a long one, has been quite interesting. It started with rocco messaging me and asking if I'd join his team for a programming contest on campus. I was surprised to say the least, espicially because I don't think I'm that good... thankfully C will be a usable language for the problems, which I use for anything that perl isn't quite right for. We took a couple evenings to practice our "leet skillz" during which we learned a few things to avoid on saturday. Better to fuck up now rather then when it counts. I think I sucked for the most part, but it was fun to work with him.
Exchanges like this were common :
"if i'm not retarded, this will read the variables correctly."
"put the refrence operater before those, or scanf will bitch"
"guess i'm retarded"
and so on. Of course, you would have to have been there or be a coder to know what the fuck i'm babbling about.
Really, I should program more often than I do, though that almost goes without saying.
Last night, we got stuck on a problem - more specifically reading the input for said problem, and just about jumped at the chance to walk away from it and go upstairs to Chris B's place for a few drinks. Now, I usually have a rule about drinking, i just don't do it if I have to work in 24 hours, but I broke that. About three times. Oh well, pretty light shots though, I didn't even feel it thankfully. It was a good time, just hanging out and bullshitting for a while.
This whole week has really reinforced how antisocial I've been recently. I've been too much of a fucking hermit. Just work, sleep, hang out on IRC, work the tournaments, etc. Of course, certain friends of mine would point to that, among other things as a sign of depression or whatever. Feh.
The tournaments. I think we're finally going to solve the biggest problem we've had with them; the damned venue. Here's what happened :
One sunday, we were scheduled to run vintage. Seven players showed up, and with the complaints, I decided it would be another six months before I attempted it again. On my way out the door to go home, I saw Dean (part owner of the bowling alley and owner of hobby world) and said "well, seven players, we need eight for it to be legal, so I'm going home."
Then he started babbling about "oh those guys are just going to use it as a free place to play cards, etc." Was complaining about how he wasn't profiting enough from it, about people buying cards online, not using the concession stand, how he might have to work out a system where people would be charged per-head to use the room, and so on. He's the kind of person that when he talks you start to hear static in your head drowning him in white noise. He is noise when we need signal.
For one, he did this before, and I said fine, fair enough. I dropped entry fees as far as I could so that players would have more cash on hand to make puchases from the stand and made it a point to announce both on the flyers and at the events that people should support the bowling alley by using the stand and so on. After a few months of basically losing money to operate the events, I had to take fees back up to what they were before, but people were still making purchases of both cards and food from the place. Thing is, events were larger, so people were there longer, so they as a captive audience (the only reason anyone buys anything there!) bought more stuff. With event turnouts dropping, we have had shorter events with a predictable impact.
But the thing is... most of his complaints are garbage. He complains that people are buying cards online. Tough shit. Sorry buddy, that's capitalism. He goes on about being a buisnessman, but cannot understand that if someone has the option to get their supplies somewhere else for cheaper, that's what they will do. Further, people STILL bought plenty of packs there, but only when Joe brought them up for me to handle sales on. Dean puts them behind the counter and makes the bowling alley employees sell them. They do so grudgingly at best, and with no visibility, they just don't sell. Not to mention the monthly draft or sealed deck events are money in his pocket with no work on his part. I've basically been free labor for him in this respect.
So, his talk of card sales is BS. Next, sales at the concession stand... Given that I'm the one cleaning up after these events, I know for a fact people are still patronizing the overpriced food at the stand. Considering that we're basically extra customers who don't take up space on the lanes, and the cost of that shit, this is undoubtedly lucrative for him.
But, clearly, nothing will sate his greed. When I told several of the players about this, they were understandably irritated. So, we're now making an effort to take over a disused student group (one that chris ford started apparently) and get a room on campus at the UC. Better lighting (more people have been complaining about the headaches now), better location, and no more bullshit. Obviously, the arrangements will change a bit, but I think it will be for the better.
Ack. That was more than a little rantish. Oh well.
About two (maybe it's now three) weeks ago, my best friend Chris and his wife came to town to visit for the weekend. He only gets to come up about once every six months or so, so I don't get to see him as often as I'd like. Of course, I should go visit, but without a car, it's not exactly easy to do that.
They got to my house at about midnight on friday night, and we were supposed to meet several people at Hudson's. I think the party was Joann (sp?), her fiancee, Jon Swanson and his girlfriend, Val, and probably others that I can't remember. Of course, the person at the door of the restraunt wouldn't let us in, despite that Chris and Melissa had driven nine hours to get to town, and that we had a party waiting inside, they didn't even care that we didn't plan on ordering anything. Even the group inside said "we just got a couple pitchers of beer, we're not going to be able to finish them without help." Still nothing. So, the people inside left, we all talked in the freezing parking lot for a bit, then went to joann's apartment and talked for a while.
Chris came by my place the next day, and we did a shot of the fucking awesome rum that morty bought me for christmas, and mostly just hung out. Went to jilbert's and had fun chatting with the girl working behind the counter, then just wandered the mall for a bit before he had to go somewhere with Melissa. We all met up again at nineish and went to Vango's. A quiet, but fun weekend.
On a down note, the hard drive on my laptop died horribly... It had been acting up since tuesday, and hindsight being 20/20, I think it was the drive wiper I was trying out... wanted to permanently purge something, and technically it worked, but the cost of doing so sucked. I've attepemted what could be called heroic measures on the machine : I snagged my Knoppix liveCD and attempted to get to the drive from there, but to no avail.
Because of the drive crash, I had to cancel a shadowrun game. Doesn't help when my bot software is on a dead drive. Reweriting something that poorly kludged together is a pain in the ass.
Knoppix was an interesting experience. Having no linux experience beyond logging into various shell accounts, it was pretty difficult to figure out a lot of what would otherwise be basic things. I spent an evening running back and forth between one machine running Knoppix and the decrepit 233 while Todd gave me suggestions and diagnotic commands to run. I picked up on a lot of useful things, and will probably be able to figure out more if I take some time to RTF manpages. But not now.
Work sucked for about a week. They rationalized that since spring break was coming up, that they could have my last cashier leave at midnight instead of 12:30 (it used to be 1am!). Given that I'm running reports and closing the liqour department at midnight, this is less than optimal, since they usually have to shut down the register 15 minutes earlier than they punch out so they can clean the belts.
This week, while it's been a long one, has been quite interesting. It started with rocco messaging me and asking if I'd join his team for a programming contest on campus. I was surprised to say the least, espicially because I don't think I'm that good... thankfully C will be a usable language for the problems, which I use for anything that perl isn't quite right for. We took a couple evenings to practice our "leet skillz" during which we learned a few things to avoid on saturday. Better to fuck up now rather then when it counts. I think I sucked for the most part, but it was fun to work with him.
Exchanges like this were common :
"if i'm not retarded, this will read the variables correctly."
"put the refrence operater before those, or scanf will bitch"
"guess i'm retarded"
and so on. Of course, you would have to have been there or be a coder to know what the fuck i'm babbling about.
Really, I should program more often than I do, though that almost goes without saying.
Last night, we got stuck on a problem - more specifically reading the input for said problem, and just about jumped at the chance to walk away from it and go upstairs to Chris B's place for a few drinks. Now, I usually have a rule about drinking, i just don't do it if I have to work in 24 hours, but I broke that. About three times. Oh well, pretty light shots though, I didn't even feel it thankfully. It was a good time, just hanging out and bullshitting for a while.
This whole week has really reinforced how antisocial I've been recently. I've been too much of a fucking hermit. Just work, sleep, hang out on IRC, work the tournaments, etc. Of course, certain friends of mine would point to that, among other things as a sign of depression or whatever. Feh.
The tournaments. I think we're finally going to solve the biggest problem we've had with them; the damned venue. Here's what happened :
One sunday, we were scheduled to run vintage. Seven players showed up, and with the complaints, I decided it would be another six months before I attempted it again. On my way out the door to go home, I saw Dean (part owner of the bowling alley and owner of hobby world) and said "well, seven players, we need eight for it to be legal, so I'm going home."
Then he started babbling about "oh those guys are just going to use it as a free place to play cards, etc." Was complaining about how he wasn't profiting enough from it, about people buying cards online, not using the concession stand, how he might have to work out a system where people would be charged per-head to use the room, and so on. He's the kind of person that when he talks you start to hear static in your head drowning him in white noise. He is noise when we need signal.
For one, he did this before, and I said fine, fair enough. I dropped entry fees as far as I could so that players would have more cash on hand to make puchases from the stand and made it a point to announce both on the flyers and at the events that people should support the bowling alley by using the stand and so on. After a few months of basically losing money to operate the events, I had to take fees back up to what they were before, but people were still making purchases of both cards and food from the place. Thing is, events were larger, so people were there longer, so they as a captive audience (the only reason anyone buys anything there!) bought more stuff. With event turnouts dropping, we have had shorter events with a predictable impact.
But the thing is... most of his complaints are garbage. He complains that people are buying cards online. Tough shit. Sorry buddy, that's capitalism. He goes on about being a buisnessman, but cannot understand that if someone has the option to get their supplies somewhere else for cheaper, that's what they will do. Further, people STILL bought plenty of packs there, but only when Joe brought them up for me to handle sales on. Dean puts them behind the counter and makes the bowling alley employees sell them. They do so grudgingly at best, and with no visibility, they just don't sell. Not to mention the monthly draft or sealed deck events are money in his pocket with no work on his part. I've basically been free labor for him in this respect.
So, his talk of card sales is BS. Next, sales at the concession stand... Given that I'm the one cleaning up after these events, I know for a fact people are still patronizing the overpriced food at the stand. Considering that we're basically extra customers who don't take up space on the lanes, and the cost of that shit, this is undoubtedly lucrative for him.
But, clearly, nothing will sate his greed. When I told several of the players about this, they were understandably irritated. So, we're now making an effort to take over a disused student group (one that chris ford started apparently) and get a room on campus at the UC. Better lighting (more people have been complaining about the headaches now), better location, and no more bullshit. Obviously, the arrangements will change a bit, but I think it will be for the better.
Ack. That was more than a little rantish. Oh well.