Two steps forward... two steps back

I decided to step down, and got the first decent night's sleep in ages. It looks like they'll put me on the books to be a supervisor at Noblesville, which should be a cush gig, and in the meantime they'll stack me, hopefully at Westfield (muncie was mentioned as another possibility, but they are too small to be able to afford me, so I should dodge that bullet).

Either the store I go to will be so grateful to have me that it'll be pretty easy, or I'll have to spend a few months being the team bitch until work starts at Noblesville.

When word gets out in my store, I suspect more than a few people will be worried. I've already gotten a call from another manager at a different store, so I know the cat is out of the bag.

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Darth Oz!

This is a homemade movie that I found through a site dedicated to doing rotoscoping effects for your own lightsaber duel movies (see the last blog post about my geek rating).

The movie itself is great for something homemade, but what amused me most was when I saw in the credits that the "Emperor" was called Darth Oz.

Anyhoo, you can find it here. It's a huge file and will take a while to download.

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Geek Test

Ya gotta love online tests! :)

I tested out a Major Geek (39.25049%) here.

And I didn't even give myself any bonus points for blogging or buying a "noble title" just because it sounded cool.

(link fixed... hopefully)

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Work stress

I may be going back to an hourly supervisor. I still haven't decided... but my store had a disastrous visit from Regional, and of 7 managers in the store prior to the holidays, one besides myself is left. All of the others have gone to lower volume stores, stepped down, or left the company.

I knew this new management position was going to be a pain in the ass when they combined my old job with another management position, reduced the amount of time I was given to work on department specific initiatives to 75% and reduced my support staff of 4 supervisors and 4 seniors to 2 supervisors and 1 senior.

The biggest plus of stepping down is that I go from a 50+ hour week with no holiday time to 40 hours, holiday pay, and OT pay if I go over 40. Granted, the net pay will be a little less, but I'll be able to handle it.

The minus is of course the pay, and the feeling that I failed. Of course, the company won't admit that it screwed up with the consolidation because even though it's losing more money to shrink, in the end it is still saving because 70% of what it is losing in shrink would have been paid out in bonuses plus the salary of the additional manager.

I'm really stressed out over the whole thing and can hardly sleep. But I have to make a decision soon, or else I'll just get put under a microscope and if I can't pull it off I'll lose my position anyways.

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ThunderCats No!

Someone made a ThunderCats movie... in their backyard from the looks of it.

Click for the trailer.

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More shared humor and wrongness

Again from my Euro friends...

http://plexus-internet.com/media/HollowMen.wmv

This next one is not for the extra squeamish...Ouch!

http://www.putfile.com/media.php?n=yougotownedwmv

I saw at least one faked "incident" in the second video.

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Something funny

Ok, my last post was so depressing, I had to post something humorous. Assuming I can get this to work, this is a gif a friend of mine from Sweden uses as a signature in our guild's forum. I tried to publish it via Hello, but it only handles jpegs. Hopefully Hawi won't mind me linking directly :).

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February Blues

I hate this time of the year. If it was up to me, I'd hibernate from Thanksgiving to St. Patrick's Day. There are anniversaries I don't want to dwell on this time of year... my father's death, my first stepfather's death, my ex-wedding anniversary... but I especially hate the one-two punch of Valentine's Day and my birthday. Just another flagrant reminder, complete with a deluge of media bombardment, that I get another year older alone.

I'm closing in on 40, and odds are now I'll never have children. While folks that know me would think that I would be overjoyed at this prospect, it also means that I am truly mortal... that when I am gone there will be nothing left behind. My family line ends with me, and in some ways that makes me feel like a failure. Maybe it's social programming or genetic drive that makes me feel that way, but it also hits me in a spiritual sense. I will be no one's ancestor. I'll be forgotten.

Okay, now I'm good and morose. Time for another beer.

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Shark alert!

The previews for next week's "Smallville" made me cringe. I suppose it was inevitable, but they are going to introduce Krypto (aka Superdog). I have a bad feeling about this.

Maybe the writers are trying to introduce something more annoying than Lois? Maybe Krypto will be put to sleep at the end of the episode, sparing us future Superdog antics and furthering Clark's sesne of loneliness.

Or this could be the worst thing since Scrappy Doo.

*looks for kryponite milkbone*

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Wrongness shared...

I should be working on the stat-block for the Predator that the players in my Firefly campaign get to have fun with in 9 days, but instead I am messing around on the net, somehow going through a chain reaction of blogs with links to entries in other blogs.

I just have to share to pieces I found. The first one is from a Star Wars convention. Some of the captions made me laugh.

http://www.livejournal.com/users/krautboy/243291.html

The second is for the gamers. Reminds me of Phil & Dixie from Dragon, except without cartoons. And they would never put this in Dragon. Guess I better work on step one.

http://www.waferbaby.com/howto/havedungeonsanddragonsthemedsex

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The Hero's Portion in modern era

One of the traditions for big feasts in old Ireland was for the warriors to compete to see who would have first cut of the feast (thus being able to choose the choicest meat). In the Cu Chullain tales, they (the warriors) would engage in contests of arms, strength, and skill to decide the winner.

I think the basic premise would be a great addition to the festivities around one of our rituals, but it would have to be put in context for our current lives. It just wouldn't be practical to go tearing through Madison county in a chariot race, even if it does sound like a lot of fun. Plus our society is a lot more egalitarian than that potrayed in the old tales. While stone throwing may sound "traditional", it is about as fair as having a knitting competition. So the challenge would be to have a series of contests that would be balanced overall and doable in an hour or so.

Some thoughts...
Horseshoes. Doesn't rely on strength, and even though horseshoes weren't in use back in the old era, it still "feels right" because of the importance of horses to the Celts, especially the warrior class. Different colored ribbons or yarn could be tied to each shoe to identify them and three tosses could be scored in order of proximity.

Archery. The homestead that plays host to our tribe's festivities has an archery range.

Dice. Yes, the requires no skill at all, but could be included to represent the favor of the gods.

Ogham. Three cards with Ogham would be drawn and the person would have to identify them. This would certainly encourage study :).

Riddles. While this is so Celtic (imo), it would also be hard to do. The best way I can think of off the top of my head is to have three riddles and have people write their answers down. Ideally, the riddles could come from Celtic tales, or be based on events, person, gods and such in them.

Drinking. Oh wait... that's not fair. ;) Granted, it would make up for my lack of archery, but I can't participate anyways.

Which brings me to the next point... the druid would have to act as judge and referee.

If you have no clue why I'm talking about any of this (and are curious) go here... http://www.geocities.com/uncleozzi/pagan.htm .

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OW!

As I sat in my chair browsing the web (okay, adding more time to my 22 days worth of reading SWG forums) I felt the shift in weight that told me my cat Kuriko had jumped onto the arm of my chair and the stabbing pain that told me she was off the mark and had sunk her rear claws into the flesh of my arm to keep from falling off.

I had the presence of mind not to jerk my arm as this could lead to more rending of my skin and hurting her (she's like 16 years old). So I yelled at her, and it took a moment to realize she had jumped down as one of her claws remained embedded in my arm.

I feel bad about yelling at her... but not bad enough to let her jump back up right now.

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Where does the time go?

I was on the forums for Star Wars Galaxies, puttering around looking for a new icon to put by my name, and pulled up my statistics.

I've spent over 31,700 minutes reading those forums (well, it takes a while to read over 164,000 posts).

31,700 minutes.
528 hours.
22 days.

Yeah, I need to get a girlfriend.

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