Date: Friday, July 10th, 2009 - 5:35am Subject: My Wish Has Been Granted Security: Public

This coming Monday at 5:00pm, I, along with whoever else signs up for that time slot, have a staff meeting with Melissa, possibly regarding new rules (I'm not completely sure about that), and also involving a portion test, which Manoah says is having to write down what comes on what for every single item we sell, then making a taco or something to show that we know how to properly portion everything. I'm not concerned about the first part, because that's something you memorize after you've been working there for long enough, but in regards to the second, I have little to no clue of the proper amounts for everything. I just go by what looks the most appealing and is also the fastest, but thinking about it some more, if they did have all of us make a taco or whatever, that would amount to alot of wasted food, so I'll just wait and see what happens on Monday. Since we're meeting with her though, I can only hope it's one-on-one, or there will be a chance to talk privately, because I still need to ask her about that stuff regarding Steve, and also what she considers acceptable for cleaning the fry dump and bagging cold line, along with the other things we try to do at night, because sooner or later I'm going to have to close with her, and I'd rather ask my questions now than wait until then and ask "When can this be done?" way too many times.

Steve actually closes with Manoah and I tomorrow night too, but at this point, it's all but been decided that he's going to be on drive through, because Manoah was on it yesterday night and I was tonight, so it's only fair, especially considering he's just had at least one day off. If that ends up actually being how the shift goes, there's most certainly going to be complaining coming from him about the headsets being broken or not being able to hear the customers or all the batteries being dead, but that's pretty much normal nowadays. I really wish I didn't have to work either, because after tonight it would be really nice to not have to wake up in the morning and instantly remember that I have to work, but it's only one more shift, and I can still make french toast when I get home, but that depends on what time we get out of there. Tonight it took us 45 minutes. Last night it was an hour and a half. Following that pattern, perhaps tomorrow it will only take ~23. We'll see.

Still on the work note, I forgot to mention last night that Eryn is about the only one thus far who has known that there's a difference between house cats and snow leopards, because a little while ago Manoah and I closed together, and I left something mundane for him to do (emptying the mop bucket, I think) despite him asking me to do it, so he decided to tell me he'd bring in one of those attention-catching object on a string toys to trick me with. If it was in any way leopard-spotted, I would keep it, but otherwise give it to our cats because they would make use of it for a couple hours or so at least. Anyways, apparently he was telling her that while I was outside waiting for them last night, and she told him there was a difference, so the first thing I hear when they come out (aside from laughing and imitating Sheila) was something about me being a snow leopard and not a house cat, then I promptly took off for home because I had gotten tired of waiting for them.

With that, I'm going to try to go to bed though, because I started hiccuping about 20 minutes ago and it's not going away and it being really annoying as such, so hopefully sleep or even flipping over onto my stomach will fix that. I don't think anything interesting is happening tomorrow (aside from work) either, but at very least I could stand to record the movies from PoPoLoCrois that I couldn't find on the UMD, so maybe I'll do that, or just back other files up in preparation for formatting on Saturday. Yesh~

Date: Thursday, July 9th, 2009 - 5:08am Subject: There's No Reason for This Security: Public

Outside of being busy, it should never take us until 2:30 to clean up and leave, when we close at 1. In fairness, Manoah called Eryn in tonight because it was really busy and he wasn't feeling that well to begin with, so if she hadn't come in we'd have been there even longer, but after 1:00 the two of them spent almost half the time it took us to close talking about Sheila and other such random subjects. I won't complain beyond that, because at this point I'm over halfway through my string of 6 closes and am simply working towards being done on Friday night thus, but that's one of the few reasons I like closing with Steve anymore. Once we're closed to customers, getting out of there becomes highest priority. Not before making sure it's a good close first, but then again, I'll say that for myself and not for him, because I don't know how he feels.

Steve is really on thin ice anyways though. Melissa was quite angry with him over his decision to not make Crunchwraps the other night when we ran out of the proper sized torts for them (and subsequent demands that I not make them either), as well as his constant closing early (once again, to be fair I haven't said anything to him yet because I like getting out of there as early as possible too), locking the far dining room door before 11 and even kicking customers out of the dining room when they were in there past 11 in one case, and so on. Those and more are all reasons I really, really need to work with or at least see Melissa privately as soon as possible, so I can ask her "Do I have the authority to disobey Steve if I know whatever he's doing or saying is wrong?" I don't want to be a manager. That hasn't changed, but I do wonder if seniority makes a difference anywhere down the line. It really had better.

As for news outside of work, I'm leaning even more towards reinstalling XP on my next day off, so I uploaded some of those movies this afternoon, but then almost immediately afterwards downloaded the stuff I needed to upgrade my PSP's firmware to 5.00 M33-6, which was promptly followed up by downloading new homebrew programs and custom themes, so there really has come to be too much for me to keep track of now. Not that I'm claiming to be able to normally keep track of all the files on my laptop, but to give an example, I like to be able to identify why certain files are there if I look in the Temp directory, or when I installed some other certain program, and how I must've forgotten to uninstall it, instead of just downloading and / or installing whatever and forgetting it ever existed once I'd finished with it. Also, that mod to remove the title bar icons is getting a bit tiresome, because I didn't expect removing the closed folder icon to affect each and every folder on here (at least in List or Details view), so yeah.

I was planning on writing more too, but it's almost 6:30 now, so I'm just going to go to bed. Tomorrow afternoon is grocery shopping, and I'm looking forward to that for a change of pace, but other than that, another standard afternoon, then working 8-close. Fun~

Date: Wednesday, July 8th, 2009 - 5:45am Subject: Mystery of the Missing Files Security: Public

As far as I can tell I've converted all the PMFs from PoPoLoCrois, yet loading the album save you get upon beating the game and watching all of the movies shows that there are at least six or seven that I'm missing. However, I've gone over the "mov" folder more than once, and although there are some files that I didn't use, almost all of them are 49kb and are a blank movie when converted, and the only other one is the very first intro screen you see when you start the game. It's still strange though, because unless all of those 49kb files act as shortcuts to the actual movies, they're nowhere to be found on the UMD, although I guess one thing that might be worth doing is connecting my PSP to my laptop so it accesses the UMD directly and see if anything is different compared to the ISO.

So there's not only that, but also the single AT3 file I wasn't able to convert. Such is made even more annoying by how I spent a good part of the afternoon searching Google for directions on how to convert AT3 files to MP3s on one's computer, then come home from work and clue in that there's a difference between ATRAC3 and ATRAC3Plus (the latter of which is what I assume is causing the problem), so all of the programs and codec packs and other miscellaneous files I downloaded and installed wouldn't have worked anyways. That's also the reason I'm strongly considering reinstalling XP again on Saturday, because I've downloaded and installed alot of stuff in the past few days trying to sort out those problems, and as silly as it sounds, Windows on a whole just doesn't feel "clean" anymore. Doing so will depending on my stopping procrastinating and actually uploading as many of those movies as possible tomorrow afternoon though, so that may or may not happen depending on what time I wake up.

Work was decent again, and I have a feeling I'm going to be on drive through tomorrow, because not only have I been on line for three shifts straight without major incident now, but Ange is also supposed to work 'till 11, and I really can't picture her or Manoah being too thrilled with the idea of being on it. No sense worrying though, because if not tomorrow, definitely Friday night, and as long as it isn't really busy, drive through requires less to be done anyways. On a more interesting note, I walked in there tonight just in time to see Melissa talking to Manoah and Steve, saying that if she were to catch anybody doing something I didn't hear, they'd be fired on the spot, then they talked about over-portioning and something else to do with fries for a bit, and then Melissa had to go back inside for something.

I really should go to bed seeing as it's already quarter after 6 though, so if I don't get to uploading movies tomorrow afternoon, most certainly updating my PSP's firmware (to a custom version, of course), because there are several interesting-looking things I've found for it that will only work on the later versions~

Date: Tuesday, July 7th, 2009 - 5:49am Subject: Awesome Timing Once Again Security: Public

On two counts really, because when I first planned on writing this entry, the whole site was down, yet it was working fine earlier in the night. Oh well. This is being typed in Notepad for the time being, simply because posting an entry just before I go to bed seems to be part of my routine right now, and as such, if I were to not do so, going to sleep immediately would feel wrong.

Anyways, timing. Yesterday night I mentioned the tracking page for that guide saying it was in Mississauga, but figuring it still wouldn't show up until later this week. This'll be one of the few cases where I was wrong, because a couple hours after I went to sleep (probably around 11), I woke up for long enough to open my laptop slightly and refresh the page, and was surprised to see that it had (apparently) gone out for delivery only ten minutes after I laid down to go to sleep. Sure enough, when I actually woke up later in the afternoon I went downstairs to see a padded envelope on the counter for me <3 What's better, I finally got an email today saying that the shirt I also mentioned buying in here a little while back had been shipped out, then about half an hour before I left for work, couldn't help myself buying a guide for the first PoPoLoCrois game / story in the PSP version. Not that I need it, and it's not like I can read most of the text in either that one or the one that came in the mail today anyways (they're largely in Japanese, with only a select few things printed in English as well (and even in the case of those, the spelling may not be the same as in the English version of the game ("Persela" instead of "Pasela" for example (yay for nested brackets)))), but you might consider it behavior that's drawn from having enjoyed the game so much, and wanting to have something else that has to do with it aside from the actual game. Such is the reason I have quite a few player's guides (which are in English, of course) for some of my other games, but I've already spent enough time trying to justify it when that's not really necessary.

Then work... It was an okay shift by any means, but once again I have to disagree with Steve on something. Among other things, we were completely out of 12″ torts tonight, which meant we couldn't make Crunchwraps, and the new Box Meal is supposed to come with a Volcano Crunchwrap. I'm not sure if it's a decision he made on his own or what, but when I first got there and was grabbing a glass for water, he informed me that we'd be giving the customers Volcano Burritos instead, as long as they agreed, because we "Shouldn't have to use smaller torts". I ended up being on line though, and while he was off doing something in the back, told Eryn (who was on drive through) that I'd still make them, because somebody was asking for one. He didn't notice anything with the first, but then when the second appeared on the board, the first words out of his mouth were "Umm, Eryn...", and then he sort of complained to himself that we weren't listening again. Granted, Steve is the manager and we're supposed to listen to him, but dear god, how I long to eventually close (or even work for an hour or two) with Melissa so I can ask her "What do you think about this?" Last time I talked to Earl, he made it clear that I should ask myself "What would Earl do?" and act accordingly, but Melissa may be different, although I really hope she agrees with the way I'm looking at it. In terms of good things though, it wasn't very busy, and line ended up being quite throughly cleaned by the end of the night (in it's entirety by me, amusingly enough), so at least tonight turned out to be more typical with the way we were last year at this time.

I ended up walking out to Michener then home from there pretty much on a whim too, but then spent another 20 minutes in the bathroom when I got home due to causes unknown (I think "abdominal distress" sums things up well enough though). Thankfully that issue didn't persist for longer than that 20 minutes, so once it had subsided, I went downstairs and made myself two more grilled cheese sandwiches, this time with baja / pepperjack sauce on the inside of one, and avocado ranch on the inside of the other, with nacho cheese to dip them in. Surprisingly good, but the sauce made the cheese slippery, so unless I held the sandwich just so, the cheese would fall out as I picked it up, and I'd be left with oddly flavored bread :B That was followed up with more converting of movies from PoPoLoCrois, and there was one .at3 file that couldn't be converted (the program kept creating a 44-byte file then asking me to press triangle), so if it's still presenting a problem when I finish with the other ones, I'll just convert the movie then record the audio with my microphone.

It's about time for bed as well though. 6:05, and my only concern aside from work tomorrow is washing dishes, so as with yesterday night, hopefully I'm able to sleep in until at least 3~

Date: Monday, July 6th, 2009 - 5:23am Subject: The Difference of A Thousand Security: Public

Was just playing PoPoLoCrois, because I ventured a bit further in it at work earlier, then quit without saving because I was in the middle of fighting Boxie when I had to go in to change, so I beat that boss, then took a look at his entry in the monster list to see how much HP he had. The answer was 15,000, and sure enough, Maira was through the door at the top of the room, and through playing the game you'll learn that she's one of the evil characters, and a battle is / was to be expected with her eventually as well. When fighting her, however, there are four targets. She is one, then the other three are the snake heads coming from her left and right sides, as well as the back of her legs which doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Anyways, the first time I fought her I thought you were meant to defeat the heads first, because they would heal her if she took enough damage, but as it turns out, the only purpose of the heads is to be a pain. If you defeat one, one of the other heads will use "Revive" which brings the dead head (yay :B) back to life with either 550 or 650 HP. Then if you're lucky enough to defeat all three heads at once as I was able to, she's able to revive one as well, and of course, they attack when she does (so the flow of battle might be (with the party I had) Pietro -> Kimen -> Maira -> Head 1 -> Head 2 -> Head 3 -> Leona -> Narcia), so within one turn all the heads will be revived and you'll be right back where you started.

Still, I was able to defeat her, and once again out of curiosity, checked the monster list for how much HP she had, because the battle seemed to drag on forever. Only 16,000, surprisingly enough, but at any rate, she's sort of been defeated, but as with most plot-integral characters, despite beating one in battle, they still manage to remain alive, and now the general idea seems to be able to "save her from Barbaran's clutches", so yeah. I would still be playing it, because I want to see if there's some place to buy more items (I used up alot of mine getting through the dungeon area of Remoria as well as in those two battles), but as if this moment it's 5:40, and I'm not going to be up until 7am like I was yesterday.

Tonight's close (and as previously mentioned, the first of 6) went pretty well aside from Steve being annoying for the usual reasons, and how busy it was at first, but that's pretty much normal nowadays, so whatever. Tomorrow should be interesting because we were either running out or completely out of quite a few things tonight (Pepsi, 7-UP, Dr. Pepper, Lettuce, 12″ torts, forks, and fry / nacho boxes), and unless Melissa brings some of the more-important things up from Windsor, they're going to have a multitude of problems to worry about either at or during the middle of the lunch rush. I don't start until 8pm again though, and the thing I'm worried most about right now is the order, but I also close on Thursday, so having to put it away one night in return for not seeing Ramsey the other seems fair enough.

I'm also sort of looking forward to waking up tomorrow afternoon, to see if anything arrived in the mail for me, because the tracking page for that guide says it arrived in Mississauga on the 3rd. Then again, that was right before the weekend, so probably not tomorrow, but hopefully still sometime this week. I actually woke up quite early this morning (~11am), and, completely forgetting it was Sunday, went downstairs to check the mailbox and was dismayed to find nothing there. Hopefully I won't do the same thing again this morning, because I'm going to bed, hopefully to sleep straight through until 2:30 or 3, but we'll see~

Date: Sunday, July 5th, 2009 - 6:36am Subject: Doing Two Things at Once Security: Public

For the first part of the night (after I posted the previous entry), I fiddled around with Reshacker and Icondeveloper and generally was able to get to a point where I had the series of steps required to do what I wanted memorized. Sometime in between that and finishing that task, however, I decided to look for a guide on how to convert .pmf files to AVIs. Simply put, I've still been uploading movies from PoPoLoCrois to that Youtube account, and earlier on I got a message asking if I could upload more, because there aren't enough on that site or something. That involves even more steps though, so just for my reference, both things. Also, one note before this: these directions are according to what I was doing, and may or may not be right. I can't guarantee you'll get the same result, or that all of the steps will even work for you, but despite that, here they are.

( Hiding Titlebar Icons )

( Ripping .pmf Movies to AVI (with Sound) )

If there's one thing that can sum those up, it's that they're both easy enough after you figure out what to do, but impossible to explain concisely. Oh well. Also, just because I really need to go to bed very very soon (it's almost 7am), here is my desktop now :3 It doesn't look like it required a whole lot of work, but in all, it kept me busy for a couple hours today, and in retrospect that was exactly what I needed. Now I'm off to bed because I do have to work tomorrow, and that shift also starts my string of 6, so yay, and hopefully I'm not closing with Steve~

Date: Saturday, July 4th, 2009 - 9:02pm Subject: This is a Timely Break Security: Public

Starting tomorrow I close for six days in a row. All the shifts start at 8, so at least that much is consistent, and it'll contribute nicely towards my next pay, but I'm still not looking forward to it. We seem to be back up to usual busyness for Summer again, so it's not unusual for it to take us close to an hour to clean up after we close. Still, it's not like I mind that as long as we're being paid for that extra bit of time, but after several of those shifts in a row the desire to not be busy and get out of there almost straight away is quite strong. Such was the case last night, where after about 11:00 I did line by myself until close (with constant orders), then we ended up being there 'till quarter after 4 cleaning up after that, but in fairness that was partly our faults as well, because more water was being sprayed around, among other things. I was going to make french toast when I came home too, but ended up making a Volcano Burrito before we left, because the one I ordered on Wednesday night that Steve made didn't have red strips in it. Then because of that, I figured I'd save it to make later tonight instead, but as it turns out, we had hamburgers for supper, and I'll likely eat them later on instead. Whatever though. I have next Saturday off, so I might as well just forget about it for a week and make it when I come home on Friday night, and that way I have something to look forward to that doesn't involve spending money ^^

Tonight will likely be slightly more boring as such, but if I could just reach over and grab my PSP I'd play PoPoLoCrois some more, because I did at work before my shift started yesterday, and was just able to reunite my party in Remoria before saving and going in to change. There actually isn't a whole lot to mention about it right now though. The whole thing with your party being split up and having to navigate through each area with one individual character was annoying (especially for Narcia), because you're more or less left to battle mechanics in whether or not enemies will be dealing critical (as in extra-damaging) hits. Still, when I entered said area I had just over 100,000 gold, and now have almost twice that. Thinking about it, that would be better if Remoria wasn't likely the last area in the game, but hopefully there will be other side-quests and whatnot to complete afterwards. Moving away from the game though, I put this movie on my PSP, and let James and Manoah watch it last night. Manoah had this look of surprise and disgust on his face all the way throughout, and James kept looking at me either as if he was about to start laughing or was going to ask "What?!" Therefore, I have to put this one on there for tomorrow night as well, just because they sound so utterly absurd, yet believable at the same time <3

I would also have a new picture of my desktop here, because I've been getting a good deal more serious about customizing it lately (at least as far as reshacking the icons go), but have run into one slight problem. Take a look in the upper-left corner of whatever browser you're using right now. There's an icon there, yes? It's size is 16 pixels by 16 pixels, which is quite fine and irrelevant at this point, but I want to remove it. The way to do that is use Reshacker (or some similar program) to replace the corresponding icon with a blank one, and I have a blank 16×16 icon on my desktop just for that purpose. However, as far as I can tell, all sizes of a given icon in the program are stored in one group (when you open it in Reshacker), thus, by replacing that entire group with the one blank 16×16 icon, I'm getting rid of all the icons. That works for what I'm trying to achieve, but also blanks them out anywhere else (such as in the start menu with explorer.exe which is the one I'm fiddling with (and is made even more fun by Windows File Protection), so what I have to do is find some way to open the package of icons that are already in the program, and replace just the 16×16 one with the blank icon :B

That's confusing enough, and I think I'll go work on that right now to save myself the worry of wondering what I was working on later~

Date: Friday, July 3rd, 2009 - 3:29am Subject: This is a Tempting Offer Security: Public

Something eBay just showed / asked me: "Spend just US $372.01 more with this seller and qualify for US $10.00 shipping if you pay for the items together". No, thanks. I only spent ~$40, and I highly doubt there'd be enough other stuff in their store to total $373. Funny, but at the same time it's obviously an automated message, so meh. What's better is I bought the item (that shirt mentioned at least once before) tonight, as opposed to waiting, because I was trying to close as many tabs as possible in Firefox, and I've had that one open for the better part of two weeks now. So that leaves my PoPoLoCrois guide, ears from Chesh, and now a shirt that I'm expecting in the mail. Also the rest of our money from Grandpa's estate, but where that's concerned, we've received nothing in regards to it aside from the full sheet of paper sized envelopes that they're sending out, and that's no indication that we'll be getting it any time soon.

Dad also told me two things earlier, one of which had to do with money, being that I have him $10 too much the other afternoon. Apparently he's only expecting $200 every month, so that works for me. The other thing was that work had called wanting to know if I'd come in at 8 to help, but I ended up going out to Giant Tiger then having a shower, and just generally no. We're rarely given more than two closers for Sunday through Wednesday, yet when I work any of those days, I still work just as hard as I would any other shift, and simply accept that we won't be getting out of there right away if it ends up being busy. Try applying that to Thursday, Friday, or Saturday though, and suddenly there's this unspoken "We can't deal with what we have ;_;". Admittedly, I would be none too happy if there were only two of us closing on a Thursday night (in this case), but I can't remember the last time somebody was called in on a shift I worked (which is sort of surprising when I think about it), so, quite frankly, they shouldn't be calling me when I have a day off.

Then again, it is summer, so it's probably busier, but I really haven't noticed it this year. To get even more general than that, I haven't really thought of it as being summer at all (aside from those several days last week when it was cruelly humid), so that's sort of interesting.

Anyways, having a shower wasn't particularly interesting (as might be expected :B), but going to Giant Tiger was once again fun, because I bought yet another furred pillow (that makes at least five I have that are either leopard-spotted or furred) for $5 when there were two other tags on it listing ten and twenty dollars as the price. Earlier on in the afternoon I had started rewriting the same entry three times because I wasn't in a very good mood and wanted to write about why to get it off my mind, but sometime since then that changed, and now I'm having what amounts to a normal night. Depending on what Cola says when he responds to the email I sent him, that may get even better, but I also have a feeling he's away at Anthrocon, so I won't be hearing back from him immediately. I was also going to make french toast earlier, but there are only three eggs left in the carton, so then I decided on KD with hot dogs sliced up in it, but sure enough, there weren't any hot dogs in the fridge either, so in the end I microwaved two packets of the Easy Mac stuff, then added milk, parmesan cheese, salt, and steak glaze. Combining the glaze and seasoning, they can be put on pretty much everything <3

I've also just spent almost two hours trying to solve a problem with Windows. For reasons I'll get to in a moment, I had a copy of GMail Notifier's gnotify.exe on my desktop. For some reason, the filename was truncated to "gnot", and the full thing wouldn't show even if I clicked on it. After much (eventually nauseating) searching around on Google, I found something that appeared to work (the last post here), but as soon as I opened Styler and the font was changed, the problem came back. Now I'm noticing another one where Firefox takes a full two seconds to minimize after clicking the button, but hopefully restarting again will fix that. Oh, well forget that. Winflip was doing something weird, and simply exiting out of it solved that problem. Anyways, what made me notice that to begin with was working on this. I tried changing at least one of the icons before, but I think I replaced the one displayed in the program's folder and not any that show up in the tray. Nevertheless my second attempt worked fine, so yay ^^

This entry is really going on and on too, so given that, and how it's already 6:30 in the morning, I'm off to bed because I do have to work tomorrow night. More things will come tomorrow assuming I'm in the same sort of pleasantly tired state, but I should probably leave a couple notes in Notepad just in case I forget~

Date: Wednesday, July 1st, 2009 - 3:24pm Subject: Still Some Waiting Left Security: Public

Received this email from Nintendo earlier this morning:

Congratulations! You reached Gold or Platinum status by the deadline of June 30th, 2009. Thank you for being a Nintendo fan and for providing feedback on products at Club Nintendo. We are finalizing details on our Gold and Platinum Special Rewards, and will have an announcement within the next month. When the announcement is made, you will receive an email requesting that you login to your Club Nintendo account in order to redeem your Special Reward. If you are a member of a Club Nintendo Family account, your Account Administrator will have to accept this Special Reward. We will then distribute rewards before the end of the calendar year. Thank you again!

Making the announcement within the next month is fine, I guess, because as long as I'm not counting the days this month should hopefully not drag along, but distributing the rewards before the end of the year? What was the point to the "Club Nintendo year" ending on June 30th then? Oh well. I'll wait until whenever they send out that second email to redeem the "special reward", then spend my 800 hard earned coins and have two things to wait for in the mail ^^ Waiting on some emails too, from Chesh and Cola for the time being, then I also emailed a random blog owner whose site I subscribe to via RSS to ask why my comments with links to the (self-created) feed for it were always being deleted, but he responded to say that he's making his own RSS feed anyways, and that he isn't personally deleting my comments, but rather running a script that removes any containing URLs to avoid spam. Sensible, and I plan on sticking with mine anyways, so yay <3

I also seem to have a bit more room to work with regarding how much Mom and Dad are getting each month, because I stopped by the ATM on the way home last night and withdrew $260. Twenty of that was split into two tens at 7-11 after I'd had a quick chance to rest at home and catch up on a few things, so when I went to bed I had $210 set aside for Dad, and $40 for Mom. Then just a few minutes ago I gave it to them, and I asked him to count it just to make sure there was enough there, and he said something about $300, which quickly changed to $260, then $250 after that. $180 for room / board / whatnot, $30 for the internet, and $40 for gas. I'm almost completely positive that's correct.

Anyways, there's supposed to be a parade going on either right now or very soon, so just because this is awesome, uncaring timing, I'm going to go out to Tim Hortons now while it's not busy and they have a better selection of stuff. Lord knows after the parade everybody will be flocking there and they will run out of at least a few things quite quickly, so yeah~

Date: Wednesday, July 1st, 2009 - 5:38am Subject: My Patience is Nonexistent Security: Public

At least in regards to Steve, because he was once again being all to pleasant after 11 tonight and the orders wouldn't stop. I'll admit I was getting impatient too, but after 12:30 or so I realized we weren't getting out of there until about 2 anyways, and instead just giggled and shot apologetic looks to some of the customers in drive through when he was slamming the headsets around because the "Batteries were dead" and such. Rest assured that I'm definitely going there tomorrow night around 10 as well to see how they're doing, and also to try a Volcano Burrito, because as bad as they are, they do look good, so I would like to say I have. Perhaps the Volcano Crunchwrap too, but that'll be something for next week, if not later.

Unfortunately, we didn't get our vacation pay this week, making it two weeks in a row now that we've been told "It'll be on your next pay" (we'd better get it eventually...), but I still made enough to cover the money Mom and Dad need with a decent amount left, and that's after putting another $30 on my Money Mart card, so I'm going to take that up to Tim Hortons at some point during the afternoon, then go to Taco Bell around 10 or so later at night. I know Mom and Dad have plans to go to the park or something, which Naomi and Adam may be joining them for, but at this point, by only definite plan is to do laundry. Well, that and maybe one other thing that I've been putting off for a couple months now, but the problem with it is not being able to find a good way to start. There are a few things I need to tidy up or put away in my room too (my mattress cover is still tucked away underneath one of my bedside tables, because the bare mattress is slightly cooler), but such are normal things for having a day off, and tomorrow's a holiday so I really should do something special, but there's plenty of time to work something out yet.

I think I'll start by going to bed though, because it's quarter to 7, and staying up isn't really getting me anywhere. Well, with slight room cleaning first, because as silly as it sounds, I'm not going to get a good sleep with the state it's in right now~

Date: Tuesday, June 30th, 2009 - 4:38pm Subject: It Always Works Out in the End Security: Public

For most of the night at work yesterday, I was planning on coming home, finishing however many surveys Club Nintendo required to put me at or over 800 coins, then go out to 7-11 for a small bag of chips and chocolate bar or something, because I was really hungry, and didn't see anything to eat at home when I left for work. As such, when I did arrive back at the house I checked the fridge before anything, and was pleased to see pizza that had been ordered for supper. I still completed those surveys first though, and at present have 800 coins and enough surveys remaining to give me at least 210 for next year, but for now, it mostly comes down to receiving the original email from Nintendo about them switching membership systems, and upon logging in and transferring my account, saw that you could complete surveys and buy prizes / earn "special" rewards if you accumulated at least 300 coins. In short, I have all I need for this year, and the only game I plan on actually buying for right now is Mario & Luigi RPG 3, and you earn only 40 coins for completing both DS game surveys anyways.

Also, I started getting extremely tired at about 4:30 last night. Somewhat unusual, but I also drank a full glass of chocolate milk about half an hour before that too, so that might have something to do with it. As such, I ended up going to bed shortly after 5, planning to sleep in even because the only thing I have to do today before work is the dishes, which I'm going to start at 5:30. Sleeping in didn't last very long, because I woke up again at exactly 12:57 and figured I'd be up for the rest of the day, but then went back to sleep at 2 again, and woke up at 4. I now feel better rested, and while I'm not sure what's going to be made for supper tonight, will probably either go to 7-11 when I get home from work.

I absolutely must go to Taco Bell tomorrow night as well now, because Steve's already freaking out about how busy Wednesday night is going to be, in that he asked Megan if she'd stay and close if they needed her (she works 'till midnight), and she said yes, despite my suggesting that it wouldn't be allowed because it's a time and a half day. Steve, however, well, he's himself, and is still disregarding any rule that doesn't make things easier for him, so I dearly hope that he gets in some sort of trouble. Also on the same sort of note, Ange has been randomly stopping by all too often on nights lately, walking into the back without her uniform on or anything, so last night, I decided to start taking note of that. Who comes in, and at what time. Just on the shifts I work, of course, but then at the end of July, will try to meet with Melissa for a bit and say "This needs to stop". We're far from perfect ourselves, yes, but having a job there does not mean Taco Bell is a place you can hang out at whenever you wish because you're bored of other places or want free food.

Anyways, Naomi's yelling to Mom about it being 5 so she can start making supper, which means I should probably go down there now~

Date: Monday, June 29th, 2009 - 6:11pm Subject: One Full Week Later Security: Public

Upon waking up and getting out of bed this afternoon, I had Naomi immediately inform me that something came for me in the mail, so I went downstairs and there was a small padded envelope on the counter. Inside was the CD I had expected to arrive last week and grew increasingly impatient waiting for, but it's on my shelf right now (the physical CD), and the songs have been ripped, so I need to look into either buying an 8GB memory stick on Wednesday (or Thursday), or deleting some other music I don't listen to that much anymore, which is the more sensible solution for right now.

Chesh still hasn't replied though, but I did get an email from eBay regarding a message the seller of that PoPoLoCrois guide sent me, simply to say that it'll be shipped out tomorrow. I can't shake the feeling that there's still something else coming for me in the mail too, but I cannot recall having purchased anything aside from that CD.

On a completely unrelated note I need to remember to accumulate the rest of the points I need to afford the Game & Watch Collection "prize" from Club Nintendo, because the deadline for earning coins is the end of June. At this point, I have 600, which is enough for the platinum gift (and hopefully the gold one as well), but that game is 800 coins, and I should still have enough surveys to earn 200 more. I've been putting that off for the past couple nights though, so I'll probably get a ride home from Steve later and do that straight away. I think it's going to rain tonight as well though, because it's unusually windy outside, and every single time the weather came on the radio last night, we were told it was going to rain.

Speaking of last night, there was an amusing note on the board at the back when I went in. Sheila's "Thought of the day" which was something like "If you want to gossip, do it about yourself". I would like to move that doing so is entirely impossible, because the whole point of gossip is talking about somebody else without their knowing. I suppose it would be possible if you had multiple personalities or whatever, but that's taking it slightly too far. Anyways, she wrote that after "catching" whoever was on line the other afternoon talking about her. Gossip will never stop. If they don't talk at work, they'll talk at home or other places, so the best you can do is just ignore it. I was trying to find that chat log I posted of Manoah and I talking in MSN one night just so I could be reminded of the couple things he's heard said about me, but literally, actions speak louder than words.

It's getting close to 7 though, so I'm going to take these last few minutes to clear whatever music off my PSP right now~

Date: Monday, June 29th, 2009 - 5:41am Subject: I Don't See the Problem Security: Public

As mentioned some time ago, we have several cases of Amp energy drinks at work that are supposed to be given out with the new box meals. If any go missing, all the staff working on whichever shift it / they disappeared on will be written up, and if the thief is actually caught, they'll be fired. Sort of extreme for such a small can of the drink, but I digress. The problem with their rule is that they're not always being given out when somebody orders a box meal, purely because we forget. Now, I can't think of any way for them to track how many should be there aside from looking at how many box meals were sold in a given day and comparing that to how many cans of the stuff there are, and tonight, we forgot to give out three. Two came from somebody in drive through shortly after 11 that wanted two of the things (box meals), but that's beside the point as well. Brandon may have taken one, because he had already taken it out from under line when Manoah told him not to, but in spite of that, before he (Manoah) and I left tonight, we each took one, and I figure it's justified for the reason I just went over, and also because we closed at 1 but didn't actually get out of there until 2:30.

The one thing I'm noticing about closing with him is that he's slowly edging more and more towards closing early. Tonight it was five minutes, and last time we worked together it was three or something, but for now, I don't intend to say anything, because it's the sort of behavior that will stop as soon as it gets noticed or pointed out. He was also being exceedingly nosy about another random topic while we were waiting for his Mom (I ended up getting a ride due to an unexpected problem created from walking yesterday), but then I attempted to take a picture of a star, and that got us onto the topic of eclipses until she arrived and we were on our way.

Nothing much has changed since I left for work, up to and including still not hearing back from Chesh yet, but the way things are going right now, I may both hear from her tomorrow, get that CD in the mail that I was waiting for all last week, and maybe even receive an email saying that something I bought just before leaving for work was shipped out. It's a player's / game guide for "PoPoLoCrois Monogatari II", which is the current book / story I'm playing through on my PSP right now. It is, unfortunately, mostly in Japanese (the guide), but after a quick search I saw it for only $10, and as such my payment has been sent off. I'm also going to end this abruptly now, because it's quarter after 6 and I still need to fill my water bottle up again before I go bed~

Date: Sunday, June 28th, 2009 - 6:10pm Subject: The Opposite of Yesterday Security: Public

I figure by the time I got to sleep this morning it was 6, and I woke up at 2:30, which equals eight and a half hours of sleep. Nothing wrong there, but in spite of that, I'm still quite tired. That could be due to several factors though, the least of which being the continued heat (at least in the house), but I have to leave for work at 8, so perhaps the walk and being more active than I am right now will help. I do wish I had tomorrow off for some odd reason (the thought keeps flashing through my mind that I do, and I'm filled with a wave of relief at the thought of not having to go there two days in a row, then remember that I close then as well), but for the time being, I work tonight through Tuesday, then have Wednesday and maybe Thursday (assuming my memory is correct) off. After that, I'm pretty sure I work Friday then have Saturday off (at least), which would make me somewhat worried about my next pay if it wasn't for that we're supposed to be getting our vacation pay this week as well.

Still as mentioned yesterday, $250 is going to Mom and Dad (and to clarify what I said before, the problem is that I'll have to withdraw $260 from the ATM, because it only gives out twenties), then close to another hundred in other expenses if I buy the couple things online I've been thinking about (among other things, a shirt, and, as mentioned previously, an extra pair of ears from Chesh). Not overly bad, and I'll certainly be seeing more stay in my bank account than with past pays, so yay <3

Also, I need to stop checking my RSS feeds quite so often because there's rarely anything new or interesting in them only 5 minutes after I previously checked (go figure), but aside from that, I'm mostly playing this game. PoPoLoCrois was at a standstill last time I played it, because I'm trying to find Gami Gami Devil (or Steel Devil, if you prefer) and complete whatever quest is required to get him to go wait in the castle too. I figure with the equipment I've picked up for him since he was removed from my party again, he must come back at some point, but the closest I can find is the statue in Hunba Hunba Village, and his crashed jet sort of thing in the jungle outside of it. If I still haven't found him by Wednesday or so though (seeing as I'll probably play it some more then), I'll just continue on and go fight Maira or whatever is to come next, then check an FAQ after I've beaten the game so I know where to look when I play through it again. I need to anyways, because apparently there's a town in the middle of the ice field at the end of the first story that I completely missed before, and it's too late to go back now ;_;

It's growing close to 8:00 now though, so in the half hour I have left, I'm going to see if anything's being made for supper, and copy some files to my PSP because I found a version of Chip's Challenge / Tile World for it, and need more levels to give me something to do while I wait for 9 at work~

Date: Sunday, June 28th, 2009 - 3:38am Subject: Same Length of Time Security: Public

Due to boredom and not having any other plans for the night, I decided to go for a walk. It was after I got home that I learned I can walk 15km in two and a half hours. The best part is I was trying to figure out how many kilometres per hour that equaled, and completely overlooked the fact that it took me that exact length of time (give or take a couple minutes) to walk out to and up Michener, then over to Taco Bell to rest for about ten minutes and get a glass of water, and thus, as long as my pace is the same as it was earlier tonight, my walking speed is 6km/h. As I should've expected, Steve was there, and simply had to tell me how last night went (apparently there were non-stop orders until 2), and how he was going to call me to see if I could help with dishes, but figured I wouldn't be at home. From about 9 to 10, no, but after that yes, although I'm still glad he decided not to.

Also regarding the walk, aside from that short rest at Taco Bell, I did not stop once. Sure, there were a couple points where I slowed down slightly to find a different song to listen to, but after a certain point, I could not slow down in the slightest anyways because my legs would start shaking, so that was fun.

I was planning on going to 7-11 for a small Slurpee at 3 as well, but between my legs hurting and not really wanting one after all, I've decided to wait. I do so wish I could be in this mindset all the time, because another thing that differed tonight compared to past walks was that I didn't stop anywhere for snacks, and as for that idea I had regarding Canada Day and Bulk Barn, I sort of forgot it's a holiday and they'll probably be closed, so that's out. Besides, that involves money, and I'm already going to be spending a fair chunk of what I get paid. Let's just say Dad informed me a little while back that from "here" on, he would need an extra $30 per month from us to pay for bills and whatnot. Funny that my issue with it isn't because of having to pay more, but because now they'll be getting $250 on the first pay of each month, which means I'll be left with $10. That could still work if I find something to put the leftover money towards, but in all likelihood I'll just start going to the bank before it closes or before my shift starts and asking a teller for the money.

Another thing I want to buy next week is a backup pair of ears, because while I was able to fix the pair I have, I'd strongly prefer to have a spare pair as well, just in case the other ones get irreparably damaged. As such, I'm waiting on a second reply from Chesh right now regarding how much the ears would be, and how much shipping is as well, but Paypal also supports instant transfers now, so that'll be alot more convenient.

Anyways, that's all I wanted to say for now, and I need to tidy up my bookmarks toolbar in Firefox, as well as my desktop, because they're all cluttered and messy~

Date: Saturday, June 27th, 2009 - 6:27am Subject: I've Wondered About This Myself... Security: Public

( Cut Because it's Long and Potentially Morbid (Yet Still Thought-Provoking) - Read at your Own Risk and Such )

Disclaimer: it's an interesting question. Just because I've answered it in such detail (at least the way I see what it asks about) does not make me potentially unsafe, or cause for concern, or anything else of the sort. I have wondered about the same thing before too, but rather forgot about or didn't think about it much again up until now. I happened to have the time tonight and didn't want to do anything else with it, and that's how this entry came about.

It's also time for bed, because it's 6:30am~

Date: Friday, June 26th, 2009 - 7:04pm Subject: The Best Day to Have Off Security: Public

This coming Wednesday, which is July 1st, and therefore Canada Day. Sure, having it off means that I won't be getting paid time and a half, but given how busy we've been then years past, I'm glad I only work until Tuesday. What's even better, they have Steve and Brandon closing. Just the two of them, and I think James is there 'till midnight, so he'll undoubtedly be asked to stay, and thinking about that makes me smile and giggle, especially when imagining how much Steve will be freaking out <3 Granted, if I was in his position I'd be somewhat stressed too, but lately he seems to still be stuck in this mindset of thinking that we have to be out as soon as possible after we close, whereas I feel there should be no mad rush, so long as we're getting paid for any additional time that we're there.

I don't have any particular plans here, and I know at least Mom and Dad will be going out to see the fireworks show in the field by The Pines, so I'll figure out something of my own to do too. Probably just a short to moderate length walk somewhere to get snacks, but I'd want to go somewhere I haven't been in a while. Bulk Barn comes to mind, but I'm also not sure how late they're open, so sometime between Sunday and Tuesday I'll have to walk over there after work and take a look at the sign.

In regards to those two bad things I wrote about in my previous entry, my ears have, by all appearances, been fixed, and I'm just waiting 'till later to see if the glue holds while out walking. I don't see why it wouldn't, but if I get overconfident now, I'll take one step outside of the house and the headband will snap again, so yesh. As for the Visa card, I called the number I was given at the bank last night, and spoke to a very nice guy by the name of "Manuel" (or something to that effect), who was expectedly apologetic ("You wish to cancel the card? I'm very sorry to hear that!"), and outside of not being able to find my account at first, was able to cancel it without any other problems, and I don't have to worry about paying the annual fee ($25) now either, so that's good :3

Supper was pretty good, considering I've never been to Quiznos before, and would have been better if Naomi hadn't been showing off for her friends and was being rude, but that's nothing new with her either. That, however, was an hour and a half ago, so for the time being, I'm waiting for it to get darker out so I can head to Shoppers and Tim Hortons. Probably around 8:30, but for now, I noticed there was also a cake sort of thing in the fridge earlier, so I'm going to see if Naomi's back yet so we can have some of it~

Date: Friday, June 26th, 2009 - 6:01am Subject: What I Dislike the Most Security: Public

About work, in this case. When 3:00 rolled around tonight, both Manoah and James were outside, and I figured they'd be in shortly to help with getting the store closed. Twenty minutes later, however, and they finally decided to come back in, and when I asked where they'd been, was told that I'd locked the door and they couldn't get in. No, I did not. I put the dish cart in front of the door with a large box full of cardboard on top of it just to be difficult, but I never locked the door. Anyways, in that span of time I was able to finish almost everything on line, and was just wiping the area around the grill when they finally came back in. As a result, we didn't get out of there until quarter after 4, but the way I see it I've earned my two days off, so that's alright.

Moving on two more random things from earlier tonight before I left. For the first, I noticed this site had pretty much slowed to the point of not loading at all, and, wanting to see if it was because there were suddenly a whole bunch of other users logged in, so I, how to say this in a non-awkward sounding way, viewed the source "code" of the page, and was proven to be correct, by this one line: <!-- LiveJournal ExpressLane: You received this page before 1390 free users, saving approximately 27 seconds! -->. Odd, considering that the same sort of thing has only happened once or twice before to the best of my memory, and even though it's probably nothing more than coincidence, work was extremely busy too. It's back to normal now though, which leads me to the other thing.

As was mentioned a couple times in the past, I have a visit tracking thing set up for this just out of curiosity, to see how many visitors it gets each day, and which entries are being read (more often than not less than three per day, and usually my most recently posted entry), but over the past couple days, have been noticing something different. Somebody from Finland (or so the page tells me) is apparently actually reading this, which I'm basing on it not just showing "0 seconds" for the visit time as almost every single other one does. More curiosity led me to search Google for their hostname, as can be seen here, and looking at the first result, you're given a username, which may or may not have been correct for all I knew. At any rate, it's "Mineko", and they have a link to their DeviantArt page, except with a dash between "Mine" and "ko". Somehow from that, I got the idea that they might be a LiveJournal user too, so I tried the two obvious URLs. Mineko apparently lives in Germany, so they're not who I'm looking for, but Mine-ko's location is Finland, and their DeviantArt link is the same as on that oekaki profile page. So I feel smart and somewhat stalker-ish now, but such is curiosity and the lengths I will go to to satisfy it <3 Oh, and if you're reading this and I do have the right name / link, hi ^^; Don't mind my being weird. I'd say it's more curiosity again, but that'd be three times in the same paragraph, which is too many.

Also, what I wrote yesterday concerning canceling my Visa card. Apparently I have to call Visa directly, so I am going to do that before anything tomorrow afternoon (barring cereal), and hopefully my worry concerning having to answer security questions that I've forgotten the answers to will not actually come true. Further to the bad sort of stuff, a piece of the headband my ears are on snapped off tonight, so I plan on asking Dad if he has Krazy Glue tomorrow afternoon, but if not, going out to Canadian Tire to buy a tube of my own, because while tape is holding it fairly well, it's still more lose than normal, so I walked home without them tonight and it truly felt like I was missing something ;_; Then if glue doesn't work, probably emailing Chesh to ask if it'd be possible to commission another pair.

Anyways, it's time for bed which should actually be decent because I don't feel uncomfortably hot and sweaty like I did yesterday night. Then tomorrow, calling Visa (it sounds like something's missing there), finding or buying glue, going to Quiznos because it's Naomi's birthday, and finally, later at night (before 12), going to the Tim Hortons out on Park Ave and possibly Shoppers as well just to look around, because Sobeys only had one type of chocolate covered fruit, which had tangerines in it that tasted disgustingly sweet, and I'd prefer cranberries or something, so maybe they'll be there. Yeah~

Date: Thursday, June 25th, 2009 - 3:39pm Subject: I Think that was Lightning :3 Security: Public

It had seriously better rain too, because looking at theweathernetwork.ca right now, there are two severe thunderstorm warnings, and on top of that, the current temperature is 34, and the "feels like" is at 43. And this is in June. Somewhat fitting though, because over the past couple weeks, I've found myself thinking every now and then that it had been surprisingly cool. Of course, I didn't want to say anything to anybody, because the same thing applies as at work, where if it's not busy, and somebody makes a comment about it not getting busy, we'll immediately get a rush of customers. Perhaps it really is just a string of coincidences, but I haven't heard any better explanations yet.

Oddly enough, it also smells like somebody is cutting their grass outside, but I have no will to get up and check right now, mostly because there's a house in the way. I did sleep in for a bit longer today, until 2:30 to be exact, but was once again dismayed to go downstairs and see absolutely nothing in the mailbox. There was one envelope on the counter, but it's addressed to Mom and Dad, and isn't nearly large enough to fit a CD into anyways. I don't really expect it to arrive tomorrow either, but given that I have both Friday and Saturday night off, I plan to get outside for a decent-length walk sometime after it gets dark, and will at some point stop by Tim Hortons as well because I want either donuts or cookies, and will have to decide which when I see what they have.

For now though, it just keeps getting darker and darker out, which is both cool and somewhat annoying (this storm had better not just blow over), and as long as it's not raining when I leave for work later, I'll be fine. "Later" tonight is 6:30, just to give plenty of time to get that issue cleared up at the bank, but now that I think of it, I should at least look around and see if I can try to find the card, then I need to clean off the SD cards for my camera as well (the files, that is) and charge the batteries, then have a shower too. Yay~

Date: Thursday, June 25th, 2009 - 5:41am Subject: Six Hours is Enough for Now Security: Public

I figure that's approximately how long I've been playing PoPoLoCrois today, and it's getting to the point where I have this dull sort of headache that's only going to go away with sleep. Still, I'm up to just starting the quest to free Kimendoji, and although I'm probably wrong again, it still feels like I'm right near the end of the game. The use of the ocarina was explained (all this time I thought it had randomly been added to my inventory and wasn't supposed to be there yet), so almost every single area in the game is accessible again, and everything the unique NPCs say comes down to "Please do your best to save this world". Then again, I also thought the game was done once I'd beaten the Ice Demon, and I'd probably be able to take it on with Pietro alone now. Then again, upon further reading it appears the game is actually divided into three separate stories, and in finding that information I also spoiled some of the ending for myself, but it's really not noticeable, outside of being shown at least one FMV and then an in-game cutscene upon defeating certain bosses.

In non-game related news, I made far too much of a mess while creating this, because after I sliced the plum in half, I tried twisting both halves opposite directions to cleanly separate at least one half from the pit. That, however, was not to be, seeing as when I twisted, the skin of the right half came off and the inside started dripping on the counter, so I just set the whole thing down and cut it up right there without so much as putting paper towel underneath it. They were good though, and if I'm not able to find anything else that looks good when I get home from work tomorrow, I'm going to make up a couple more, because there are still three plums in the fridge.

Anyways, time for bed, which will hopefully be decent because I have two fans going, one on each side of me. Then I'm actually going to try to sleep in tomorrow as well (no getting up as soon as I open my eyes to check the mail), but once again, that depends on the heat, although there's apparently a chance of thunderstorms from tomorrow evening through to Friday, so maybe it will rain on my way home and make it a bit more pleasant thus.

As per usual though, superfluousness, which means bed. It's almost 6 anyways, so meh~