sugardeath

I currently have two keyboards hooked up to AndrAIa for reasons that I would rather not go into. I press numlock/capslock/scrolllock one keyboard, they both light up. Neat little thing I discovered a few years ago when David was in fourth grade. Again, details I will not go into; it’s looking like this will be a big post already. And I’m only still planning it out right now.

Opera has been slowing down BIGTIME lately. It’s weird.

List of topics so I can remember what to write about:

1. Julie got fired??
2. Work Party: The Beginning
3. People I hung out with early on
4. NICK LIKES KELLI
5. Survey
6. Volleyball
7. Olivia
8. People I hung out with for the rest of the day/night
9. KELLI THINKS NICK IS GROSS
10. Eating contests
11. Random yelling (screaming is a more appropriate term) at everyone by everyone
12. Zois’ arrival
13. Volleyball: der Zweiter
14. Zois’ departure
15. Shootin’ the shit ‘neath the pavilion
16. Work Party: The End

I’m pretty sure I broke this up a bit too much, but we’ll see.
It’s all after behind the cut.

(HOLY SHIT TEXT)

tl;dr AMC DRAMA + FUN TIMES @ PICNIC + RANTING = NOT LULZ SO NOT LULZ

I should add a new category: Novels.

I currently lack any resemblance of an urge to write in this thing. I dunno how much longer this will last, but it’s already been a few days. There’s stuff I want to post about, but I just don’t feel like posting.

I got sun-burned at work yesterday. Sun-burned. At a movie theatre.
Larry: Yeah, Zois wants you to go out and sweep the gravel around the trashcans and then go sweep-up by the wetlands preserve.
1) I was just outside sweeping.
2) We have a wetland preserve?
3) I just walked by Zois while sweeping up shit. Can’t he tell me himself? He’s the general manager. He can tell everyone what to do. But won’t. Why? This is for another rant.

I spent a total of an hour and a half outside yesterday. My face was red the rest of the day, seems to be slightly better today. The back of my neck (as always) is a nice red. My arms surprisingly didn’t get burned and actually have a nice tinge of color to them. We’ll see how long that lasts.

Bill in booth needs to get seriously yelled at. There was an employee+immediate family showing of the new Harry Potter in IMAX 3D (misleading, the last twenty minutes are in 3D). The little semi-circle shadow thing went across the screen indicating that the 3D was supposed to start (if you’ve ever watched or sat in on a showing of IMAX Superman, you’ll know quite well what I’m talking about). Twenty minutes later another semi-circle shadow thing goes across the screen. Waaaaiiit. There was no 3D. When the first shadow went across, there was supposed to be a green glasses icon on the bottom of the screen, indicating the audience to put on their 3D glasses. There was no such thing. Also, there should have been a seriously fucked up picture as the second film reel is being displayed on the same screen (slightly offset depending on the desired depth of the picture as well as at a different angle, even) as the first film reel (IMAX 3D is done with two film reels. IMAX projecters really are interesting beasts). We had a normal picture the entire time. I was upset. That was seriously the only reason I watched Harry Potter, for the 3D. I will be getting a ton of questions about it. The movie was blah, so I just wasted my time. What garbage. David and I saw Transformers again afterwards. God I love that movie.

Larry and workJason got promoted to OC understudy last week. Larry? What? Jason, ok. He’s awesome. He totally deserves it. Larry? Not in hell. Larry has been here maybe four years or so? Five? Jason has been here a year. Larry got promoted to Usher Superviser at the same time I did. Jason was hired when we got promoted. May of two-thousand six. Jason was promoted to Usher Superviser three months later with Christian, who will have been here three years in September (he was the first group of new-hires that I had seniority over). Kevin, who got hired two months before I did, was pissed when Christian and Jason got the promotion and he didn’t. Sorry dude. Seniority means jackshit. They were both well qualified for the position. Kevin finally got promoted last month. Christian applied for the OC understudy. He didn’t get it yet. He was livid that Jason got it. I will say again, Jason is well qualified for the position. Just because you’ve been here for almost three years and he’s been here barely a year does not mean you will get promoted before him. It IS very odd to see someone get promoted once three months after being hired and again a year after being hired. Two promotions in one year. To which I say, con-fucking-gratulations dude! Of all the applicants, he was the strongest candidate. Larry was easily the weakest. Why did Zois choose Larry?

Why didn’t you apply Tony?
I would have. Trust me. I totally would have. Let me break it down, though:
1) I will be in school starting August 19th.
2) I have to quit at the end of the summer because I will be in Chicago for nine months and cannot come back every month. Jessi can (she goes to Alma) and does come back every month, therefore she does not have to quit. I cannot. I will probably not come back for the October break. The fact that Ford’s homecoming and my October break lined up and that I was invited was sheer coincidence. I worked one day that weekend. I doubt I will come back for Thanksgiving, which I worked three days last year. Christmas break, OK. Perhaps. Spring break? Blah. I can stay on campus, I think. Easter? Did not even work it last year. The fact that I have to quit because of school does not make me look good for a promotion.
3) I do not want to have to work directly under John Zois or Patrick Casey or Dan Van Deusen. I cannot stand them. I do not give this as a reason.
4) I will be quitting shortly. Not because of school. Because I cannot stand it there anymore. No point in even trying anymore. I do not give this as a reason. Yet.

Previously, I would have jumped at the oppourtunity for promotion. I would have loved to be an OC. There’s something to be said about not having to sell tickets or food or sweep up shit. About actually managing people. The “managing” we do as usher leads is a joke. All the regular red shirts can do everything we do, most of them just don’t give a shit. But whatever. Too late now.

Speaking of not giving a shit… I had the two worst ushers Friday morning… Corey and Emilio. I never did get around to: yelling at Emilio for making out with his concessionist girlfriend in Transformers for half an hour while her friends waited for her so they could go home (she was their ride?); yelling at Corey for being a dumbshit and staring wide-eyed at theatre sixteen as people our opening the doors and pouring out just as he was to hed behind concession stand for something; yelling at Emilio for putting his broom down all the way at that end of the lobby and standing directly in the middle of the main lobby like a manager just staring at his performance schedule while it was clear that sixteen had indeed let out and Corey did indeed need help; letting Zois have a piece of my mind.

I think there will soon come a time when I do not care about ending relations with the theatre on bad terms. Christian and I will have ALL night to talk about this, though. Kevin actually came up to the two of us while we were raving about things and said “Do you guys want to walk out? I’m thinking about it…” Wow. He just got promoted too. I did not expect him to bring it up. He won’t do it alone, though. None of us will. Well, I will if nothing happens before I leave. I have to. There is some cowardice there, but mostly it’s because it’s going to be lame if it’s only one or two people that go. We need a few people. We need lots of people. We need it to be awesome.

Soo… I have not seen Dad since Wednesday before I dropped Alyssa off. I am pretty sure he is either in Hawaii at the moment or on a plane very near there (how long DOES it take to get to Hawaii?). Pretty sure meaning we talked about me possibly driving him to the airport almost two weeks ago… and that was it.

Got sent home early today at about nine… Jason FINALLY arrived (with Cat) at around ten-thirty, so the three of us and Paul went to Denny’s for dinner and to hang out. Afterwards we came back to my house and kind of hung out for a bit before everyone left due to boredom.

At the moment… I am so freaking bored. EEERRRRRRFFFFF I am thinking of going to sleep just to curb the boredom (and because it is three-thirty). But what would I do tomorrow? Oh! Greg’s grad party is tomorrow. I wonder if I will get up early enough to hang out for a bit before I go to work.

I really do not like the changes going on at work… Freaking new management. Just… Ugh. Dan said to workJason and I today that he does not think he will have any trouble with the two of us but that workAndrew and Larry might cause some trouble… I am more of the silent type. When Dan says that Zois now wants us to take our time and make sure the theatres are absolutely spotless, I am going to take my time, damnit. He now wants quality over quantity. Understandable, but when we had quality before… It is kind of pointless to make us work extra hard for the same results. Seriously… is there really a difference if the theatre is absolutely spotless or just merely appears spotless? With how I have done things for the past three years, you would have to be looking really hard to find anything indicating laziness. Perhaps I have just perfected being lazy while still getting the job done… but I got the job done. The customers will not be checking everything to see if we are doing our job. They just care if things are reasonably presentable, if the food tastes okay, and if there is anyway to squeeze free movie/popcorn/pop passes out of us. Jason had made up his mind, separately from me, to do the same thing… We are just going to take our sweet time cleaning these theatres. Apparently Zois went up to Christian while he was on his phone in the break room (not yet clocked on) and called him “a failed lead.” Andrew has already been yelled at. I wonder how Larry and Christian handled things tonight.. I wonder how the five of us will handle things down the line… (I do not count Adam as a real lead…) I forsee demotions, firings… It is going to be fuuun! I have yet to decide where I draw the line… when enough is enough. I have already gone through various situations and outcomes in my head (something I do… about everything; usually results in lack of action on my part… I was once told it is nearly as satisfying (and a lot less troublesome) to punch someone in your imagination than it is in real life… I have extended this idea to my social life too), but I just get angry thinking about it, so…

Apparently it’s cheaper to pay one of our nightly janitor crew two dollars an hour to come in and take care of the women’s restrooms than it is to have the already on the clock male ushers take care of them… as they’ve been doing for the past eight years. There are five fucking restrooms available to the patrons, it is not that hard to walk for a minute, maybe two if you’re slow, to get to another restroom. It takes maybe a minute or two for us to finish in there, so you might as well just wait it out. You’ll miss less of your movie that way. “Why do you have men cleaning the women’s restrooms?”

…

Just a little off track there… Either way… having a dude clean the women’s restrooms is NOT THAT BIG A DEAL ZOIS. It is inferiorating to have this mexican chick garbed in street clothes DOING OUR JOBS WHEN WE ARE PERFECTLY CAPALBE OF DOING IT. It leaves us with less to do. Which leads to management seeing that there’s nothing for us to do… which leads to people being sent home and hours being cut. And money is saved! Profit! Jackass.

And all that is just from today. Like I said… It will be interesting to see how us usher leads (and everyone else, too) deals with Zois and his backwards way of doing things. The dude is AMC, too. It’s not like he came from a Star or a Loews… I thought Mom was joking when she said the Livonia 20 theatre (where he’s been working since it opened (like Sandy at ours), save for the first year the Forum was open) was going to have a going away party for Zois… the kind he would not be invited to. I can totally see them doing that, though.

I wonder how Sandy is faring at the Great Lakes… Apparently they still do things the old Star way and her goal is to make them AMC in all aspects.

It is amazing how completely different the two highest ranked managers in the Detroit market (and probably lower Michigan market) can be.

Most of you guys probably just skipped right over that. Don’t lie. I don’t blame ya.

Jason took pictures of my car, though! I wonder if he uploaded them yet. Now it can rain… It hasn’t rained in forever. Weather.com predicts “isolated t-storms” for Wednesday night… That’s crappy. I want some good rain, damnit! All over. None of this isolated shit…

Today is Friday (despite being four-ten in the morning on Saturday), but it felt like Saturday the entire day… I am becoming disoriented. I remember completely losing track of what day it was last summer. That was neat. Sleep work sleep work sleep work sleep work sleep work. Houses and buildings and roads and cars and fences and street lights. Come on. Someone wanna go ride the Dodge Park trails with me? We can start at Farmstead Park, go to Clinton River Park (I am definitely going down there when we get the torrential rains that we need.. I love it when the Clinton River overflows into the apartment complex on Riverland), and finally go to Dodge Park. I need to see some green. Granted, what I see in the sub and all around is way more than what I ever saw in Chicago, but it is nice to just lay by the Clinton River and look at the sky through the trees. Anyone? No one? God I hate you all.

Actually.. Every bit of both Illinois and Indiana that I have seen has had far less trees per square area than the single subdivision that Dad’s house resides in. Mom’s sub has more trees. But then traversing through Michigan on my way home from Chicago is verry nice. Indiana is very… flat. Flat and empty. Bad combination. Michigan is pretty flat, but it’s at least got shit. I remember Linda saying something along the lines of “Oh my god you guys have trees!.” Yeah, we do. I think that will be one thing that will be hard to give up. I don’t know if I can live anywhere too grey and full of cement for too long. I need my nature. Thankfully there’s a freaking lake near campus.

I think I need sleep.

I don’t think I will get it.

I need to fix this cough.

I seriously wonder how many people think “tl;dr” when they read my journal… I know I would.

So those screw/bolt things on my license plate were a total bitch… Finally got them off, though, and put on the new plate. The new plate would totally suck (stupid new design) were it not for the fact that it says SUGRDTH on it

Rock on.

Took the car for a drive today, psych was canceled. Lots of traffic. Hate busses. Saw gas prices ranging from $3.07 to $3.29. What’s it like in the D-Town?

Went to humanities… fell asleep. Generally I try to be inconspicuous about my sleeping (though I’m sure the professors know damn well when a student is sleeping), but when I saw a kid sleeping in the front row, I gave up on trying to look awake and just passed out.

Registered for classes at Linda’s urging.

CS331 (Databases and Algorithms or something?)
CS350 (Assembly! WHOO!)
MATH148 (precalc… stupid retakes…)
ITM460 (Some computer multimedia class. Or more web oriented. I was looking at this one and 461, but 461 interfered with one of my classes)
SOC200 (sociology something or other)

16 credit hours.

Doing my schedule for next semester kinda makes ya think about this semester, ya know? I could have done sooo much better… I got a 62.5% on the bio exam I took a week or two back. The average was a 69%, but I totally could have done better if I studied sooner… The final is gonna be a bitch. Gotta know all twenty-four chapters. And do damn well. It’s worth 60% of the final grade. For everyone else. 75% for me. I missed the very first exam, but the professor was nice enough to help me out on that. Awesomes… Gotta do well…

I was trying to look at Macomb’s class schedule for the summer (to find a class that might take the place of Math148 and 149, so that I could go straight into 151 next semester), but I could barely navigate their website… I could totally take summer classes here at IIT. Work at the River East 21, maybe. Where would I live? Wouldn’t get a cheap CTA Card, either (I’d actually have to, gasp, PAY for each and every train ride). Summer housing on campus is ridiculously expensive… Doubt I have the money for an apartment. Plus classes here are also ridiculously expensive. A class at Macomb would be cheap.

And the Forum 30 knows me. They’ll give me hours.

Also, friends. Those people at home who like to hang out with me. Weirdos.

There’s my little bit of emo for the day. Valid reason for it, too.

Played some Halo with Jason, Phil, Toro, Kevin.

Played some TMNT (I BEAT THE WATER LEVEL, ON ONE GO).

Played some Prey. I seriously hope I’m not on the final boss already. That would be way too quick (I’ll have to install Doom 3, next. Never did get past the first level of hell.).

Hung out with Linda for a bit (crap, still gotta buy my formal ticket… table 33, I believe? I seriously hope we don’t have to dress up like we did for Ford’s homecoming… I don’t have a coat/jacket thingy, and I think Pete may actually be going, so I may not be able to borrow his again..). She had an… explosive episode… (I declare innocent bystander status!)

Alles gut.

Jeremy has had his computer copying Windows settings and shit from one harddrive to another (through Windows’ Transfer Files and Settings application thingy) for over a day and a half now. Probably two. I think he’s got three harddrives in there now, or something. Just stick everything you think you’ll ever need on a separate harddrive, and wipe the other(s). Start fresh with whatever operating system you want, and never move those files from that drive. Store everything that matters to that drive. Applications? No. Music and movies? Yes. School stuff? Yes. Other personal documents? Yes.

NEVER use the Documents and Settings folder (or the My Documents folder, for those of you running older versions of Windows), unless you are mounting another harddrive or partition over that folder (which is a pain in the ass to do in WinNT/XP).

Example: I had a T (guess what it stood for) drive in Windows. I stored everything important there. Never had to reinstall Windows in the two and a half years I had it, but if I ever had to, there would be VERY little backing up to do. When I migrated to Linux, I just installed over the Windows partition (which \was on a separate harddrive from my personal stuff), and all my stuff was still on the other drive. Untouched, perfectly usable still. Mount that drive as my /home directory in Linux, and ALL of my personal settings are stored there. For every application. Automatically.

If I need to reinstall openSUSE or wanna try out Ubuntu or anything else, all my stuff is intact. Opera will still have all my bookmarks, Gnome will still look EXACTLY the same (which is totally fucking awesome, so much time has been spent customizing it), and there’d generally be very little to do in regards to making the computer mine again.

Same idea if you mount a drive as “c:\documents and settings” in Windows (though you’ll have to worry about the registry, which is another pain in the ass on its own).

…

Um… end rant… <_<

Yeah.. I’m totally a CS major… what tipped you off?

(The “My Documents”/”Documents and Settings Folder” is such a retarded idea.
Besides, what’s easier to work with:
“c:\my documents and settings\satoshi\local settings\my music\evanescence”
or
“t:\music\evanescene”)

Linda lent me The Atrocity Archives a week or two ago, and I just finished it a day or two ago. Very cool book. Very nerdy. I enjoyed it (When magic and the occult meet technology, which then meets interdimensional travel, which then meets Nazis and Hitler’s face carved into the moon, you know you’ve got a good book.)

Ending this now. Need to. Class at ten.

Why don’t you guys ever update? Heather has a nice long post (almost negates her long post time), and Lacy is pretty good with updates, but what about the rest of you?? Jason, how’s school? Are you meeting people yet? Raul, fucking post man. Your main page has posts that go back OVER A YEAR. AND THERE’S ONLY EIGHT POSTS ON THE PAGE. I wanna hear the adventures of the Latin Whore! In New York!

Greg! Update us on stuff! You still being emo? ‘Cause you’ve been damn emo lately. Worse than I!

Andrew! Post stuff! How’s school? MST? Robotics?

Jacki too! I never talk to you. And from what I hear, no one else does either. We want to know what’s going on!

And Alyssa! You still have a bloggy thing on there! Post to it!

Come on people! I need shit to read! The only people I’ve really talked to a lot (almost every day, thanks guys :-P) since I left have been Jason (over both AIM and Skype), and Alyssa (just AIM). And Heather here or there.

Tim’s usually on late at night and, while I am too, he’s usually damn tired and incoherent… and playing FFXI… Not a good combination.

I talk to Paul every now and then too, but not much. Good luck with that Asian chick by the way.

I’ve talked to Catherine more than I’ve talked to most of you. And I haven’t seen her in two years now.

Get Skype bitches.
Conference calling.
What more should I say?

I want to know what’s going on so I’m not out of the loop when I come back to visit. You guys are my friends, I care about you!

Hell! I’ve even talked to Ryan! AND HE’S IN SEATTLE. You guys can surely do better than Ryan! I mean, he’s Ryan! Come on!

If I don’t see a new post on NewTF within a few days, a REAL POST from someone other than Heather and Lacy, I will stop writing stuff on here. How is it that a site with eight contributers is being beaten in post frequency by a single lame ass guy who’s always playing video games or watching anime with guys from down the hall?

We went to the student fair yesterday.. I signed up for the FIRST Robotics Team, the Anime Club, and the Medieval Club. How lame are those clubs, eh? Doesn’t help my geek image much, eh?

It almost seems as if my website has a more interesting life than you guys.