The lengths people will go to for video games…
2 minute read
November 17, 2006, 11:00 AM
Sometimes I can’t get over what people will do in order to be the first to get something. Check this out:
Continue reading…Categories: Some people, Walmart
I got that new winter coat, and did some serious driving…
5 minute read
November 16, 2006, 1:41 AM
First of all, I had fun on my latest Richmond-to-DC trip, where I go up to Washington DC via Richmond, which takes me east on I-64, onto US 250 near Richmond, through downtown Richmond, and then north on I-95. While on I-95, I take US 1 through Fredericksburg before returning to I-95, then continue on I-95 to Potomac Mills.
Potomac Mills put me a hair behind where I wanted to be on this trip, but it was worth it. I went to the Casual Male store, and got a new winter coat. This one is similar to the one I used from 2001 up until last winter, but is a little bit longer, has different sleeve cuffs, and has a detachable hood, which my other coat lacked. The only thing that I didn’t like was the price tag: $99.99. Ouch. Then add another $5.00 in sales tax, and it starts to hurt a bit. But I like the coat, and it feels really good on me. Now I just want a really cold day so I can give it a whirl for the first time.
I also tried on a number of other coats to see what I liked. I even tried on a black trenchcoat to see how it fits. It was interesting, but it was a bit longer than I felt comfortable with, plus buttons to keep it closed seemed kind of cumbersome. Plus I just couldn’t imagine it as a “me” kind of coat. I made the Chuck Taylors very much “me”, but I wasn’t able to pull that same feat off again with the coat. Still, I know what I like, and that wasn’t it. But the coat I did pick is just going to be a dream.
It seems that we did it…
2 minute read
November 13, 2006, 10:12 PM
Categories: Clothing, DC trips, National politics, Retail
I got my strap, and I got a battery for the Lappy…
< 1 minute read
October 21, 2006, 6:21 PM
My strap and the Lappy’s battery came on the same day. First of all, thank you to everyone who made suggestions regarding both items.
Interestingly, Mom intercepted the package for the strap before I got home, and was wondering about the fact that I’d ordered from a scuba company. After all, I’ve never expressed an interest in scuba diving, nor have I even so much as mentioned it in passage. And then Mom sees this package, a nondescript brown box, addressed to me, with “scuba.com” as the return address. So it caught her interest. And so I explained the whole story, as I already explained to you here, ending with, “And no, I’m not planning on taking up scuba diving.”
I still find it amusing, though, that the only place where I could find a replacement strap was through a scuba place. Of all places, a scuba place. That just doesn’t make sense, but I’m like, sure. At least I got a new strap. And the bag rides like two inches higher with the new strap than it used to, and I have no problem with that. So all is well on that front.
And meanwhile, we scored a direct hit with the Lappy’s battery. We got an exact replacement, and it snapped right in, and now it’s charging peacefully.
So once again, all is well!
I returned empty-handed, but…
3 minute read
October 16, 2006, 11:31 PM
Yes, I’m sad to say that I returned from Charlottesville empty-handed, having gotten no shoulder strap for my camera bag, and no battery for my Lappy. Sad times on both counts. I went all over the place, too. I went to Office Depot, to Best Buy, to Circuit City, to Ritz Camera, to Target, to JCPenney, to Belk, and even to Wal-Mart in a last-ditch effort. It turns out that no one sells replacement shoulder straps, and I looked in camera sections, luggage sections, and even the ladies’ handbags to see if I could dig up a stand-alone strap. No dice. These stores would have been more than happy to sell me a shoulder strap with a bag attached to it, but I neither want nor need a new bag. Big Mavica’s been living in its current bag for three and some years, and it’s quite happy with its living space, thank you very much. Ritz Camera came closest, selling replacement straps. However, they were designed for the camera itself, and not for the accompanying bag. Big Mavica’s strap presently has no issues, and so I wouldn’t think about replacing it at this time, though they certainly had some nice ones.
Note that I didn’t go to Batteries Plus, though, to get a battery for the Lappy. I can’t say that I didn’t try to go, but when I got there at 7:30 PM, they were already closed. So that was a wash.
And like so many times when I go out, I get recognized from my job at Wally World. You see, we get a lot of people from Charlottesville, because the Charlottesville store is not a Supercenter, and ours is. But at least when I get recognized, they always tell me how nice and helpful I was when they were patronizing the store. It would be something else if they told me I was Mr. Crabby Pants or something. I do have days at work when I get crabby, don’t get me wrong, but the customers don’t see that. The only time in recent memory that the customers could sense something wrong was the day that I ate a banana on my lunch hour that for some reason didn’t agree with me, and I was feeling really bad afterwards, and I looked like I was feeling bad, and the customers picked up on it, with one even asking me if everything was all right. I think I ended up taking like six Tums for that, in an attempt to feel better. I did end up feeling better before the day was out, though.
Categories: Retail
The only thing wrong with the Lappy is…
< 1 minute read
October 16, 2006, 2:45 AM
…the battery. I checked the Lappy out from top to bottom, and the only thing wrong with it is the battery. I got only ten minutes of life out of the battery before it started screaming for its AC adaptor. It went from full to zero in a very short time. I did a little research on it, and I’ve determined that during Mom’s time with it, she made good use out of the battery, and it basically won’t hold a charge anymore.
I’m going to Charlottesville on Monday anyway to get a new shoulder strap for my camera bag, and so I’ll probably swing by Batteries Plus or somewhere like that for a new battery for my Lappy while I’m at it.
Also, I’ve determined that the new notepad cover that I discussed here will be just fine for logging Metro trains. I took it with me on my most recent DC trip, set the paper up with the proper columns to be my transit log, and stuffed it in my bag. And all in all, it worked. The pad that came with it holds only ten trains per page, down from fifteen on the old notepad, but it works for me. Unless I have something like the fourth of July where I rode 23 separate trains, two pages per trip will work just fine. In my DC trips since July 4, I average 14.5 trains per trip. So in short: no problem. So my search for a notepad is over. Thank goodness.
You know what they say…
< 1 minute read
October 2, 2006, 8:54 AM
You know what they say… what’s worse than being seasick once? Being seasick twice, of course!
Okay, I just wanted to throw that one out there.
Meanwhile, I’ve misread my schedule at work a few times over nearly three years with Wal-Mart, but this one was particularly amusing. Today, I showed up for work four hours early. I showed up at 7:00 AM – sharp – and I didn’t have to be there until 11. That one was almost as bad as the time when I thought I was off Wednesday and Thursday of a particular week, rather than off Tuesday and Wednesday of that week. I showed up at 7:00 AM – sharp – and had my vest on and everything, went to clock in, and the timeclock kicked me out, since I wasn’t scheduled. Turned out that they needed an extra person on Tuesday, so they were able to accommodate my mistake, thank goodness.
Today, the question soon turned to what to do for four hours. I think I spent the time wisely. I went to Shoney’s, had a nice breakfast, and read The Washington Post. The Post is always a good read, when I have the time. I can polish off the Staunton News Leader in fifteen minutes on a slow news day. Then another ten minutes and I can knock out the Waynesboro News-Virginian. A slow news day with The Washington Post will take at least an hour.
And now, here I am, writing to you from the Augusta County Library, which is between Shoney’s in Staunton (I won’t go to the one in Waynesboro) and work.
So there you go.
Categories: Walmart
My kingdom for a notepad cover!
3 minute read
October 1, 2006, 10:20 PM
Remember back in October 2004, when I wrote this Journal entry? It was about when a company called Myron sent me a notepad with a flip-top cover as a free sample, printed with the name of my father’s consulting business, “Evolved Quality Consulting”.
I actually started using that notepad back in August 2005, and still do. I’ve actually refilled the notepad twice since I got it. I use it to log the transit vehicles that I ride in. For instance, this is what I logged in my little notepad on September 24, 2005:
Categories: Products
And another piece of computer equipment bites the dust…
2 minute read
September 16, 2006, 10:47 PM
Yep… sad to say, after I spent a whole lot of time working with my Hewlett Packard 930C printer, I’ve come to a conclusion: It’s broken.
So last night I bought a new printer. I didn’t truly realize it until last night, but the straight inkjet printer seems to be going extinct. Everything is either specialized for photos, or is an all-in-one printer/scanner/fax/copier. Since I generally don’t print photos, I don’t particularly need something specialized for photos. For the amount of times I print photos, it’s not worth it. I also already have a scanner that works just fine, so I didn’t particularly need a new one. However, due to the lack of choices in straight inkjets, I bought one of those printer/scanner/fax/copier ones.
I ended up getting an HP PhotoSmart C3140, mainly because the scanner surface is about the same size as my present scanner, which is an HP ScanJet something or other. I’m going to be sad to retire my scanner, which is in perfectly good condition, but there is a perk to this: I can consolidate my setup. I no longer have to have the printer off the desk and on a side shelf. I can put it front-and-center on my desk, where my scanner currently resides. So that’s a plus.
If anyone knows the high value I place on personal hygiene, it’s got to be…
2 minute read
September 6, 2006, 1:11 PM
If anyone really knew what a high value I place on personal hygiene, I’d have to say it would have to be the people at the Wal-Mart in Woodstock. I go there on my way home from Washington, and that’s usually when I stock up on all of such personal-hygiene type items.
Seriously, I actually go out of my way to avoid having to shop at the store I actually work at. Trust me, 40 hours inside that place in a week is plenty.
Still, ask the overnight staff at Woodstock. I come in there on my way home from a DC trip, and get eight or nine bottles of shampoo, 30 bars of soap, or a few bottles of body wash when I determine I’m starting to run low. Likewise, I’ve been known to get a few boxes of toothpaste refills (I like Mentadent), a few bars of deodorant, and flosser refills. I like to really stock up when I go shopping. It’s a habit I got when I was in college, and I haven’t outgrown it.
Reason I mention all this is because I’m starting to get to the end of my last bar of deodorant, and am trying to figure out if it will make it all the way to next Tuesday, when I make my next DC trip. So it’s currently an issue that’s really on my mind.
You’ll notice one thing that’s not on my list, though: cologne or after shave. I have no use for scented water. That and one of my many pet peeves is people who use too much cologne. If I can smell you coming a mile away by your cologne, you’re wearing too much. There’s one particular coworker of mine that does this, and you can catch the scent and realize, oh, that’s (name) coming while he’s still a long way off.
So all in all, three cheers for personal hygiene, because the alternative is to smell bad. And it’s never pleasant to have to deal with stinky people.
Just make them an offer that they CAN refuse…
2 minute read
August 17, 2006, 8:11 PM
First of all, hello from Pentagon City.
I went over to Brookstone while here, and they have this new device that you sit on that’s supposed to work your body as if you’re riding a horse. Okay, fine. So I got on, I sat down, and I gave it a whirl. I made some interesting faces while riding that thing, trying to maintain my balance on there.
So then this group of teenaged girls comes in. They see me on the thing, unbeknownst to me. I got off. They want to see me ride it again. I said, “No thank you, I’ve already ridden it. Why don’t you give it a try?” They declined. They want to see ME do it again. I declined again. Then they start offering me money. One girl offers a quarter. Another a penny. Then someone ponies up a dollar. I still refuse.
I got this feeling that they were making fun of me. And I was through riding that contraption and that was all there was to it. So when they asked how much it would take to get me to ride it again, I went for the big guns. “Fifty bucks,” I said. They were quite shocked at the price I named, and left, which is what I wanted them to do. Because when you’re being made fun of, it’s best to one-up them. And one-upping a group of unsupervised teenaged girls that all share one brain amongst the lot of them is not hard to do.
Seeing these groups of teenagers at Pentagon City makes me think that putting these various groups from out of town in chain gangs is not a particularly bad idea. Since the adult leaders of these groups use Pentagon City as a way to cut these children loose while they go take a smoke or something. So they subject the rest of us, the well-behaved members of society, to these obnoxious children.
Categories: Arlington, DC trips, Retail, Some people
The first fires took two buildings…
< 1 minute read
August 6, 2006, 1:22 AM
The fires set at the Outlet Village by the local fire departments for training purposes actually brought two buildings to the ground. They burned the barn, which formerly housed Gitano, the Artisans Center, and OCAT, but also tiny Building 18, which housed the mailboxes for the complex, and which also at one point housed a tourist information center. As you can see, #18 is completely gone, and then all that’s left of the barn is the silo, which now has dark markings on it from the fire. Additionally, the shingles are missing on the edge of the roof closest to the barn on Building 5, and the siding is noticeably melted on the front of Building 2.
So there you go. And with the conventional demolition of Building 16 well underway, that makes three down, and 15 to go (I mistakenly said there were 17 buildings in the complex earlier – there are actually 18).
Categories: Waynesboro Outlet Village
And when the smoke clears…
< 1 minute read
August 4, 2006, 9:39 AM
According to The News Virginian, the barn-like building, that housed a Gitano outlet, and later the Artisans Center of Virginia and OCAT, was torched for firefighter training. So say goodbye:
And according to the same article, a neighboring building was to be burned to the ground as well for outdoor training. And this is the first of a series, too, as fire officials have received permission to torch almost the entire complex before it’s all said and done. Maybe I’ll get to go to one of these to watch – from a safe distance, of course.
And I’m going to quick swing by there on my way to work today and get a couple of photos with my phone.
Categories: Waynesboro Outlet Village
The last photo of the Outlet Village (mostly) whole?
2 minute read
August 3, 2006, 6:22 PM
This is perhaps the last photo that will be taken of the Waynesboro Outlet Village mostly intact. I heard on WSVA on the way home from work that tonight at 7:00 (about at the time I’m writing this), area fire departments will be using the former Outlet Village as a training exercise. Thus instead of just straight demolishing the complex, they will be burning it down first. It will certainly serve our local fire departments well, as they will have the opportunity to train in how to fight a fire in a commercial building. And with the Outlet Village consisting of many buildings (17 according to the map, though #15 is already partly demolished), there will be no shortage of buildings to torch for training purposes. I’ll try to get pictures of the Outlet Village from the same vantage point tomorrow, after they’ve torched it.
Categories: Waynesboro Outlet Village
I took a crew with me to DC this time…
4 minute read
August 3, 2006, 12:36 AM
First of all, welcome to August, boys and girls. July is just so last month.
And August 1 saw me taking the Sable on its sixteenth DC trip, and this time with people in tow. Mom and Sis went with me on this particular trip. Mom came along because she was seeing a friend from high school, and then Sis came along as a what-the-heck kind of thing.
And amazingly, I did my whole routine. I made both my up-stops, though we got to Vienna really early compared to my usual arrival time. But not to worry – we made up that “early” time with what I’d call a “drop job”. Usually when I take these trips, my first stop is Rosslyn, without exception. I can’t think of a DC trip that I’ve taken since I started doing this regularly in 2004 where I did NOT stop at Rosslyn first thing. This trip would be that exception. Since Mom was meeting her friend at Union Station at 10:30, we did that first. So thus instead of Rosslyn, we went straight to Metro Center, and then took Red to Union Station. And once we got Mom to her friend, Sis and I got to have some quality time together.
So what did we do? Back to Rosslyn, duh… I had errands to run, and it was also right about my Rosslyn time, too, so it worked out. Sis also had a snack at Tummy Station in Rosslyn Center, so it worked out.